Parma

In July 2015, the club that had played in Serie A for most of the previous two decades no longer existed under law. A second bankruptcy had wiped out Parma Football Club, and what started again that summer, entered in Serie D by a group of supporters, carried a new name built from an old date: Parma Calcio 1913. Three promotions later, it was back in Serie A.

The first bankruptcy had come in 2004, after the collapse of Parmalat, the dairy company whose money had built the side that spent the 1990s beating clubs with far longer histories. That side never won Serie A itself — its closest finish was second, in 1996–97 — but it collected almost everything else: the Coppa Italia three times, the Cup Winners' Cup, the UEFA Cup twice, the Super Cup and the UEFA Super Cup, all inside a single decade.

The club traces itself back further than either boom or ruin. It was founded on 27 July 1913 as Verdi Foot Ball Club, marking the centenary of the composer's birth, and lasted only months before a group of players broke away before the year was out to form Parma Foot Ball Club, taking the black cross on white that gave the "Crociati" their name. Yellow and blue came to sit alongside it, and both pairings still appear in the club's badge and nicknames — Gialloblù, Crociati, and Ducali, the dukes.

Every match since 1923 has been played at the Stadio Ennio Tardini, a ground built to hold close to 28,000 but capped well below that for safety reasons on matchdays. It has stood through the Verdi years, the Parmalat years, the Serie D restart, and the return — the one constant address for a club that has had to rebuild its name more than once.