US Salernitana

US Salernitana 1919
	US Salernitana 1919
Basic data
Surname	Unione Sportiva Salernitana 1919 Srl
Seat	Salerno
founding	1919
president	vacant
Website	ussalernitana1919.it
First soccer team
Head coach	Stefano Colantuono
Venue	Arechi Stadium
Places	37,500
league	Series B
2019/20	10th place

Unione Sportiva Salernitana 1919 is an Italian football club from the Campanian city of Salerno . The club's stadium is the Stadio Arechi with space for 37,500 spectators. The club has played in Serie B since its promotion in 2015 , but has already spent two seasons in Serie A in the past .

history

Beginnings

In 1913, the first football club called Salerno Foot-Ball Club was founded in the Italian city of Salerno in the Campania region . The first president was Donato Vestuti , an entrepreneur from Salerno. The newly founded club won its first game 2-0 against FBC Settembrini, a small club from the surrounding area. With the beginning of the First World War , the so-called great catastrophe of the 20th century , gaming was also stopped in Salerno.

After the end of the conflict that raged in Europe from 1914 to 1918 , a new club was founded in Salerno. This new association, which incidentally came into being only a short time after the death of the previous president Donato Vestruiti, was called Salernitana Calcio in 1919 . In the first season Salernitana Calcio played like many of the newly founded clubs in the Promozione. In the very first season they were promoted to the Prima Categoria , which replaced today's Serie A from 1898 to 1922 and is now the eighth Italian league. With the introduction of the Prima Divisione as the first division and the Seconde Divisione as the second division in 1922, Salernitana Calcio now played in the Seconda Division, today's Serie B , because the year before it was not possible to qualify for the new Prima Divisione. In the following years, Salernitana Calcio often switched between Prima and Seconde Divisione.

When Serie C was founded as the third Italian league in 1935 , the club from Salerno also had to compete in the third division. After three years in this league, he was promoted to Serie B in 1938 with a first place in Girone E before L'Aquila Calcio . But in the very first season in Italy's second-highest division, he was relegated to Serie C. Only in 1942/43 succeeded again in the series B. But it never came back. Due to the worsening of the Second World War and the Italian involvement on the part of Hitler's Germany , the gaming operations from 1943 to 1945 came to a standstill.

First and second class

After the end of the Second World War, the game operation was regulated in such a way that the teams that played in the first two leagues in the year before the unwanted forced break were classified in qualifying rounds in the first two leagues. In the first season after the Second World War, in the 1945/46 season, Salernitana Calcio reached 9th place in qualifying for Serie A or Serie B, which instead of the hoped-for participation in Serie A "only" was classified in the series B meant. But only a year later, together with Pro Patria Calcio and AS Lucchese Libertas, they were promoted to Serie A. But in the first year they were relegated immediately, during the so-called Grande Torino of Turin , whose winning streak a year later in a plane crash should come to an abrupt end near Turin , the fourth championship in a row. This was followed by a long time in Serie B for Salernitana Calcio. After the team only narrowly failed to rise at the beginning of this time, the performance then went downhill, so that in the 1955/56 season they were together with AS Livorno had to relegate to Serie C.

Slow promotion back to Serie A.

After relegation from Serie B in the 1955/56 season, there was a fairly long time in Serie C. At first it took exactly ten years before the promotion to the second highest Italian league succeeded. In the year mentioned Salernitana Calcio secured first place in the Girone C and the associated jump into the second class, just one point ahead of Cosenza Calcio . But again, the team from Salerno rose in the first season in Serie B as bottom of the table with 10 points behind on a non-relegation place. Now it should take longer than after the last relegation from Serie B before the second-rate game in Salerno should be played again.

After Salernitana Calcio played again in Serie C since 1967, the club had to qualify for the newly created Serie C1 in 1977/78 . In the year mentioned, Serie C was divided into Serie C1, the third division, and Serie C2 , which replaced Serie D as the fourth division and made the latter the fifth-highest division. Salerno qualified for Serie C1 and played in this league for twelve years. Already in 1981/82 and 1984/85 the promotion to Serie B was narrowly missed with fourth place, but in the season 1989/90 it finally worked with the leap into the second division. With second place behind Taranto Sport Salernitana Calcio was able to qualify for the second division season 1990/91. After a short interlude in Serie B, however, a year later it went back to Serie C1, now called Lega Pro Prima Divisione. After another three years in the third division, he was promoted to Serie B again in 1994 after winning play-off games against AS Lodigiani and SS Juve Stabia .

In Serie B, Salernitana Calcio achieved good results in the following period. Already in the first year with rank 5 at the end of the safe league. The club was able to repeat this placement the following year. But in 1996/97 they narrowly escaped relegation to the C1 series. But in the following season Salernitana Calcio dominated Serie B and in the end, with 72 points from 38 games and 8 points ahead of the runner-up, SSC Venice, secured promotion to Serie A for the first time in over 60 years. In addition to Salernitana and Venice, Cagliari Calcio and Perugia Calcio could also rise . In the following Serie A season, however, Salerno rose just one point behind the fourteenth Perugia Calcio together with Sampdoria Genoa , Vicenza Calcio and FC Empoli from Serie A again.

Current development

Logo of Salernitana Calcio 1919 (2005-2011)

After relegation from Serie A in 1991, Salernitana Calcio was second class for many years. The placements in the second Italian league were from time to time more and more modest, so that in 2003 even relegation games against Caso Catania, the predecessor club of Catania Calcio , were necessary to prevent relegation to the C1 series. Two years later, however, the club went bankrupt and had to restart the C1 series. The now renamed Salernitana Calcio 1919 club failed in the first season in the third division only narrowly on the rise after CFC Genoa stood in the way in the play-off games . Two years later, Salerno secured promotion back to Serie B with a first place ahead of AC Ancona . There the team was able to hold out for two years. 2008/09 Salernitana Calcio reached 14th place. But the following year the team played a disappointing season, so that in the end with just 17 points from 42 games and 34 points behind a non-relegation place, the renewed crash into the Lega Pro Prima Divisione followed.

There they played at the top of the table right from the start and reached third place after all 34 game days, while AS Gubbio 1910 , only promoted from the Lega Pro Seconda Divisione before the season , took first place and thus directly promoted to the series B, could secure. However, the third place entitled Salernitana to participate in the playoff games, where another promoted team was determined among the second to fifth placed teams. In the semifinals they prevailed against US Alessandria 4-2 on a return leg. The Salernitana Calcio team then stepped onto Hellas Verona , where they were defeated 1: 2 after both games and thus had to remain in the third division. However, due to severe financial problems, the Lega Pro Salernitana Calcio did not issue a license for the third division season 2011/12, which forced the club to go into bankruptcy. Salernitana Calcio was dissolved and re-established under the name Salerno Calcio . In the fifth-class Serie D one got back into the league operation. There he was directly promoted to the fourth-class Lega Pro Seconda Divisione, before the club was renamed in 2012 to the current name Unione Sportiva Salernitana 1919 . In the 2012/13 season, winning the Girone B of the Lega Pro Seconda Divisione achieved the second promotion in a row and the promotion for the third-class Lega Pro Prima Divisione. In addition, the Supercoppa di Lega di Seconda Divisione was won for the first time .