Inside the Promotion machine

Sev­eral arti­cles back I cov­ered rel­e­ga­tion tar­gets so per­haps it’s time to talk on pro­mo­tion, how it works in Italy and who in Serie B is posi­tioned to make it happen.

Basi­cally this is how it will play out, the top two teams from Serie B are auto­mat­i­cally pro­moted. If the dif­fer­ence between third and fourth place is less than ten points, the next four teams play off with the win­ner gain­ing the third pro­mo­tion spot, oth­er­wise the third placed team is pro­moted. More…

The fol­low­ing table lists the cur­rent stand­ings for the top six in Serie B and if noth­ing changes from now until end of sea­son, we will see a play off for that third place promotion.

The Top Three

With five match days remain­ing lead­ers Chievo face off in four of those against clubs from the bot­tom half of the table. Lead­ing all com­ers Chievo are in the favored posi­tion of hav­ing the most favor­able sched­ule for pro­mo­tion success.

In sec­ond place are Albi­nol­effe hav­ing come lit­er­ally from nowhere in the last decade but before talk­ing on that mir­a­cle lets dis­cuss third place Lecce.

Lecce haven’t lost a match in their last 12, only 4-points off lead­ers Chievo and Serie B glory. The south­ern­ers, rel­e­ga­tion vic­tims two years ago, were joined in their decent from Serie A by Tresvio and the mighty Juven­tus caught in the Cal­ciopoli scan­dal. Lecce has waged a dogged cam­paign, los­ing only once at home on Octo­ber 20th against fifth place Bres­cia. The club have three home matches remain­ing and main­tain­ing that fortress record surely will posi­tion them for pro­mo­tion. I do get the feel­ing Lecce trav­els down­ward are a mere blip on cal­cio radar but pro­tect­ing their one point lead over Bologna does them lit­tle good for auto­matic pro­mo­tion. Lecce must over­take new boys Albi­nol­effe who they play on May 10 if they hope to avoid a play off and they must throw every­thing into that match.

Onto the David and Goliath story, the star of the show, Albi­nol­effe. The club barely a decade old, was formed from the merger of for­mer Serie C2 teams Albi­nese Cal­cio and S.C. Leffe. After being pro­moted to Ital­ian Serie C1, in 2003 Albi­noL­effe, under coach Elio Gustinetti, gained a sur­pris­ing tri­umph in the divi­sion play-off final, beat­ing Pisa, giv­ing them the right to play in Serie B. For two sea­sons the club treaded water in B, and then lost their favorite son Gustinetti who went in search of new pas­tures. Vin­cenzo Espos­ito stepped into his shoes, but after a dis­as­trous start was replaced by Emil­iano Mon­don­ico, who staved off rel­e­ga­tion that year before engi­neer­ing last season’s impres­sive 10th-place fin­ish. [1]

(video, one high­light of the 2006–2007 sea­son was of course the 1 — 1 home draw against Juven­tus when Albi­nol­effe took an early lead over the giants with Joel­son con­vert­ing the penalty awarded after Gigi Buf­fon tripped striker Ruben Gar­lini in the box.)

Mondonico’s suc­cess how­ever was quickly for­got­ten with the return of Gustinetti to lead the club yet again with “fluid, effer­ves­cent, two-touch” foot­ball observed by Cor­riere dello Sport writer Fabio Monti. Albi­nol­effe on the cusp of their great­est tri­umph, pro­mo­tion to Serie A, have sev­eral dif­fi­cult matches remain­ing. Men­tioned already is the May 10th win­ner take all match against Lecce, but they also face vis­i­tors Rim­ini Cal­cio, a team they’ve not been able to beat in their last five meet­ings and finally they play away to eleventh place Ascoli. Ascoli have also been dif­fi­cult for Albi­nol­effe to over­come, with the lit­tle guys win­ning only once in the last five head-to-head.

Ref­er­ences

[1] The Guardian — Can Albi­nol­effe write the great­est fairy­tail of all ?

[2] Cor­riere dello Sport — Il cal­cio più bello? In provin­cia di Bergamo

Tagged as: , Albinoleffe, Bologna, Brescia, Cheivo, Gustinetti, Lecce, promotion