Club focus: Tough year in store for Palermo

Most Serie A clubs this Summer have attempted to strengthen their squads. Inter, Milan, Juventus, Napoli, Lazio and Roma have all added significant players to their rosters while Genoa and Fiorentina, both aiming for top six places, have also added players of quality in the shape of Sebastian Frey and Andrea Lazzari whilst also retaining important players as well. Even Udinese, who sold Sanchez, Inler and Zapater can still call on developing talents and established first team players in the shape of Di Natale, Asamoah, Armero and Handanovic. For Palermo however this market has been something of a different story.

The season for Palermo ended on a high last year, even if they lost in the Coppa Italia final to Inter Milan. The final in the Stadio Olimpico represented a magificent moment for the club and their tifosi in pink replica kits vastly outnumbered their Inter rivals, taking over around three quarters of the 72,000 capacity stadium. Enthusiasm was high even in defeat but one wonders whether that is the case now after a quite woeful Summer market. Gone are Javier Pastore, Cesare Bovo, Mattia Cassani, Salvatore Sirigu, Fabio Liverani and Antonio Nocerino. The only transfers of note to come in are Matais Silvestre and Andrea Mantovani. True, this is a squad that still boasts talent in the shape of Josep Illicic, Armin Bacinovic, Ezequiel Munoz, Abel Hernandez and Fabrizio Miccoli but the sale of some of their best players, especially in the back line, is not the actions of a club aimining to keep pace with the rest of the big sides in the division.

Palermo fans will be disappointed and not for the first time given that Cavani and Kjaer both moved on last Summer and now both find themselves in rival Serie A sides, and given the huge income received from the Cavani and Pastore sales questions will be rasied as to why more of it was not invested in the squad. Palermo fans will also be disappointed that they are already out of Europe following a quite pitiful display in the Europa League qualifiers and that their coach has already been fired before a single game has been played in Serie A. The reigns have been handed to Devis Mangia who at just 37 years of age has a massive job on his hands after Delio Rossi declined to take up the hot seat in the Renzo Barbera once again. 

Despite this Zamperini will surely expect them to challenge for the Europa League places but with everyone else re-enforcing this will surely be beyond them. A place in the top ten looks like the best they can hope for at this stage and the dream of chasing down a Champions League spot, as they did just two seasons ago, must feel like a dim and distant memory. As for new coach Mangia he had better hope to hit the ground running at home to Inter this coming weekend else the comparisons made to Pep Guardiola by Zamperini himself today will also seem like a dim and distant memory as well.