Tommaso Ghirardi, former president of Parma, declared on TeleTutto's "L'irverente" program that the decision to sell the club was both the bravest choice and the biggest mistake of his career. According to Ghirardi, the sale marked the beginning of the spiral that led the club to bankruptcy and its return to Serie D.
Ghirardi says he took control of Parma in 2007 and guided the team to qualification for the UEFA Cup in 2014. "We achieved an extraordinary feat, but two weeks after the victory on the pitch we were informed that there were bureaucratic irregularities that prevented access to the European competition," he explained. The irregularities, amounting to 260,000 euros, had to be paid in November. “Covisoc, the body that supervises budgets, carries out regular checks and they never warned us,” he added.
To obtain the UEFA license that year, the club spent 13 million euros on compliance. Ghirardi specified that 70% of this sum was linked to Tanzi's management, since Parma Calcio, purchased by him, had not gone bankrupt at the time of the purchase. “To participate in the UEFA Cup we had to pay off all the club's historical debts, including those relating to famous players,” he said. When the team reached the knockout stages, the body once again raised the issue of the €260,000 that had not been paid four months earlier.
After receiving this news, Ghirardi held a press conference in which he declared that he no longer wanted to invest in football and that he wanted to sell the club. “I was in a hurry to sell and I did it to the wrong person,” he admitted, citing the guarantees received from figures in the sporting world and alerting football leaders of the situation.
Parma's future remains uncertain. With the club now in Serie D, the management will have to tackle the reconstruction of the club and the search for new investors. For now, Ghirardi's decision to sell the club remains a turning point in Parma's recent history, marking both a courageous step and a mistake that has had lasting repercussions.