On Wednesday, FC Südtirol passed a milestone in the away game against Benevento Calcio. It was the 27th game for the newly promoted team in Serie B, the second highest Italian professional football league. Eleven games remain until the end of the season on 19 May. At the traditional club near Naples, which has already completed two seasons in Serie A, the upper house of Italian professional football, the kickers from Bolzano won 2-0 goals.
Matthias Rüb
Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta, based in Rome.
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FC Südtirol now occupies fourth place with 44 points and 30:27 goals. The goal of remaining in the league has thus been achieved, although only three-quarters of the season has been completed. The mood among the team and staff was thrilled after the away win in the middle of the English week. "We will hardly slip under the line," said coach Pierpaolo Bisoli in Benevento. In fact, the lead of 18 points over the relegation ranks is reassuring. "Today we can say that no one will take Serie B away from us. We are in the process of writing a fairy tale," continued Bisoli, who is known for his extremely cautious view of the future.
Up there are only four points
That's why Bisoli, who had taken over the newly promoted team at the beginning of September after a thoroughly failed start to the season with three defeats, did not want to look "up". The gap to second place, which would mean direct promotion and thus the march through to Serie A, is currently just four points.
Unlike in Germany, in Italy the third promotion or relegation is not played between the third last of the first and the third of the second division. Rather, three teams are always relegated from Serie A, while the last promotion place to Serie A is played out in a play-off series between the teams in third to eighth place in Serie B.
The "cushion" of FC Südtirol to ninth place is currently seven points. The newcomer in Serie B could actually play for promotion to Serie A at the end of May at the end of his first season ever in the second highest division. "At the end of the season we will celebrate, even if we finish ninth," says the notoriously sober coach Bisoli.
The South Tyrolean weekly magazine "ff" recently christened the Bolzano club "FC Maximum", because no other club in Serie B has made so much of its financial resources. After that, the club spent about 390,000 euros for each point, if you put the achieved number of points in relation to the squad value according to transfermarkt.com. According to this calculation, the relegated teams from Serie A such as CFC Genoa, Cagliari Calcio and FC Venice cost between 1.9 and 2.4 million per point.
In addition to the extremely efficient purchasing policy of the club management managing director Dietmar Pfeifer and club manager Hannes Fischnaller as well as the coaching staff, there is the style of play of the team under head coach Bisoli. In Benevento, the hosts had 72 percent possession, but did not bring about a significant finish. It was the fifth away game in a row, which the back team of the red-whites from Bolzano survived without conceding a goal. Conversely, FC Südtirol uses its few chances with an efficiency that is described by the media as "brutal".
Damian Gruber as the only fan
In the meantime, the club name of the sensational team from Bolzano is loosely over the tongue of football reporters throughout Italy, admittedly as "FC Sudtirol" instead of with the strange umlaut. The fact that the club from the predominantly German-speaking northern province would have to be given an Italian name after promotion to Serie B, for the sake of national acceptance, such as "FC Alto Adige", as South Tyrol is officially called in Italian, is no longer an issue. In the provincial capital of Bolzano, the association has long been an "integration engine" between the German and Italian language groups. And throughout Italy, the famous "FC Sudtirol" further enhances South Tyrol's good reputation.
The story of Damian Gruber from Bolzano fits in with this. On Wednesday, he was the only supporter of FC to travel the approximately 850 kilometers to the away game: first with his own car to Bergamo, from there by plane to Naples and finally by rental car to Benevento. After the pictures of the loyal fan with the red and white scarf went viral in the yawning empty guest block in the Stadio Ciro Vigorito, Gruber received the accolade of the "tifoso eroico" (heroic supporter) from the Italian football press.
In an interview with the channel "Sportitalia", the employee praised his boss, who also gives him time off during the week when an away game of FC is pending. Gruber was richly gifted with jerseys by the victorious players after the final whistle, and the tifosi of Benevento Calcio also paid the lonely fan the highest respect with a banner with the inscription "Onore a chi macina km" (about: Honor to him who eats kilometers).
This Sunday (15:00) FC Südtirol welcomes AC Perugia. The domestic Drusus Stadium has a capacity of 5500 seats, 600 of them in the guest block. And what if next season Juventus come from Turin, Inter and Milan from Milan and Lazio and AS Roma from the capital?