Pisa has a debt to collect in Serie A


Piazza dei Miracoli, the LungArno, the Normale University. That of Pisa is a story that puts together provincial fans, a volcanic president and Diego Pablo Simeone, a normal university town halfway between the tourists who take pictures trying to hold up the Tower and the radical Tuscan folklore, made up of a plate of spaghetti and some Chianti at the restaurant in the square, two steps on the LungArno until the entrance to the curve at Romeo Anconetani. This is the Italian style of Pisa and the Arena Garibaldi, a leitmotif from next season could become a habit for Serie A teams and fans. A 7 days at the end of the Serie B in fact, the Nerazzurri of Pisa are high, very high in the standings, to fight with Cremonese and Monza the two places available for direct promotion.  

The Pisa knows the Serie A. There has been for seven seasons, also winning a Mitropa Cup and being able to boast the merit of having brought to Europe one of the talents of South American soccer most characteristic of all time, the Cholo Simeone. It was 1990, Simeone (as he himself recounted in the documentary Partito a partido) was playing for Velez, and Pisa, after yet another astounding championship for the Argentine, managed to bring in the Serie A of Maradona, Van Basten and Platini. The Nerazzurri club at the time was also famous for the character of the president Romeo Anconetani, one of those that would deserve a dedicated biopic for that rhetoric of the president with his scaramantic rituals before the match. In that season with Simeone, however, the trick didn't succeed and the team slipped into Serie B where, since then, between a bankruptcy and a change of ownership, it has never risen again.

In the nineties Italy was the navel of the world from a football point of view and the Tuscan Nerazzurri, in the Serie A of the top players and stadiums of (and for) Italia '90, were an extra that lasted a few seasons. But in that party, in that period the football environment of Pisa was special, the reality of the province with the Tower of Pisa if the game against the best teams in the world. Not only in Italy, Pisa lifted two Mitropa Cups led by Stefano Colantuono and Carlos Dunga, passing through Tuscany before stopping in Florence.

But with such an inviting past in terms of aesthetics and rhetoric, what should we expect from Pisa in Serie A today? The club is very different now than it was in the Romeo Anconetani years. The new ownership is led by American Alexsander Kaster, a banker who is extremely adept at investment funds and who immediately put significant finances into the construction of a new sports center, under construction since this year. The team is led by a young and unprejudiced coach, Luca D'Angelo, and full of exquisite talents such as the interesting striker Lorenzo Lucca, the cold Sibilli, the captain Birindelli (son of Alessandro, ex-Juve, Pisa doc) or the promising defender Beruatto (also son of art).



But what makes Pisa the new Italian sports province is the stadium that, Serie A or not, will remain the dear old Arena Garibaldi, also a vintage symbol of our championship. For the new category, at most, the stadium will have some innovation, with the structure that will remain the same as announced by the current president, Giuseppe Corrado. But the Arena Garibaldi, located very close to Piazza dei Miracoli, like any provincial stadium preciously hides its fans and its stories, such as those of the derbies with Livorno in Serie B or the transfers of the great teams like Juventus, Milan or Maradona's Naples.

In Serie A it would follow the role of the provincial of the heart that Siena played in the unbreakable Artemio Franchi with a view of the Torre del Mangia. For the bianconeri, like Pisa, the history in the highest category lasted a decade. In this sense, the Nerazzurri in Serie A would bring a dot in the map of Italian soccer that has not been seen for some time and that would rearrange a region - Tuscany - that in recent years between failures and relegations has lost much of its tradition in professional soccer. 

Could the new Pisa, with the new foreign ownership and an important technical sponsor, also live a sports model in the style of Venice, with the constant dialogue between tourist brand and local fans? With a shrewd and artistic narration of the way soccer is lived in Italian cities of art and a clear symbolism to refer to, even for the technical sponsor adidas it could become a fascinating challenge.

For now, in Pisa you only wait to go up in Serie A. On the other hand, in the province, what is not pragmatic, is long-winded and so it waits despite the position in the standings may already lead to early celebrations. It would be nice to see in Serie A, even if only for one season, the Maritime Republics of Pisa and Venice, as they once dominated the Mediterranean Sea and, today, in front of a few thousand spectators, challenge each other for a place among the best twenty teams in Italy.