Salernitana

Franck Ribéry is the name supporters reach for first when they talk about Salernitana's last stretch in Serie A — the return, in 2021, after a twenty-three-year absence from Italy's top flight, that ended with the club finishing bottom of the table in 2023/24. It went down again the following season, beaten in the play-offs and dropped into Serie C.

Unione Sportiva Salernitana merged with a local club, Audax, in the 1920s, became Salernitana Sport in 1978, went bankrupt in 2005 and was refounded as Salernitana Calcio 1919. A second collapse, in 2011, saw it thrown out of the Italian league system and forced to start over from Serie D, under the name Salerno Calcio. Promotion followed, and in 2012 the club took back the name it had carried at the very start.

Home matches are played at the Stadio Arechi, where close to 37,000 seats are physically installed, though the homologated capacity used on matchdays, by the club's own figures, is 29,739. The maroon shirt that gives the club its nickname, I Granata, has been worn since 1943; the crest, designed in 1949 by Gabriele d'Alma, carries a seahorse.

The fixture against Avellino, the Derby della Campania, is the one marked before any other on the Salerno calendar.

All of it traces back to 19 June 1919, when Unione Sportiva Salernitana was founded in the city.