Parma has had money problems for a while now and as they’re over $200 million in debt, they were automatically relegated from Serie A to Serie D this year. They had to change their name from Parma to Parma Calcio 1913. Now it’s getting even worse and Parma has resorted to selling their history to try to raise money to stay alive as a team.
A report in The Guardian said that Parma will be trying to sell eight trophies they have won in their magical run in the 1990’s. They are selling their 1992, 1999 and 2002 Coppa Italia trophies, 1993 Winners’ Cup trophy, 1994 European Super Cup trophy, 1995 and 1999 Uefa Cup trophies and 1999 Italian Super Cup trophy.
One hitch to this plan is that UEFA prevents any team from selling their trophies. In The Guardian article, they quote UEFA regulation, “replica trophies awarded to winners of the competition must remain within the relevant club’s control at all times and must not leave the club’s country without Uefa’s prior written consent.”
So there definitely isn’t a guarantee that Parma can sell their trophies but that doesn’t take away how sad this journey has been for Parma. Either way, it’s very sad that a team has to sell the trophies they earned throughout their history. It’s even sadder that they may have to appeal to UEFA to get permission to sell their trophies. Here’s an idea, maybe UEFA can operate as a kind of pawn shop and loan Parma some money in exchange for the trophies back. Then the trophies stay within UEFA and Parma gets the money they sorely need. Then if Parma someday gets itself back together and out of debt, they can pay pack UEFA for their history. I don’t know, maybe that’s unrealistic or something that neither UEFA or Parma want to do, but that can potentially be an ideal situation.
