Lecco promoted to Serie B, beat Foggia in the Lega Pro-Corriere.it playoff final

To get an idea of ​​how much time has passed, football fans must return to Milan’s Fatal Verona, when Nereo Rocco’s boys lost the scudetto of the “star” on the last day. For others, the half-century distance materializes by thinking that the film won the Oscar that year The Godfatherthat Elvis Presley was the star of the first concert in the history of TV broadcast via satellite around the world (Aloha from Hawaii) and that the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York were opened to the public. In 50 years, since the 1972-73 championship, a lot has changed. And Lecco in 2022-23 has “filmed” its return to the future: it has reconquered that Serie B that two generations of Blucelesti fans have never seen.

A surprise promotion, after having eliminated in the playoffs, in sequence, the favorites Pordenone, Cesena (certainly the number 1 seed in the play-offs at the end of the championship) and Foggia, all beaten at home. Today, in the final act, Lecco beat Delio Rossi’s Rossoneri 3-1 in a comeback in front of 4,000 cheering Lecco residents (and a thousand disappointed Foggia residents) – with many fans left out of Rigamonti-Ceppi, and this due to the stadium’s low capacity will be a problem for the next Serie B – to reach an unexpected goal. In fact, Lecco had left to save themselves in the C series that they regained only in 2019. And they didn’t even experience a good start, given that in September they had to replace the former Juventus player Alessio Tacchinardi on the bench with the more experienced (and former Lecco footballer) Luciano Foschi, born in 1967, who after winning Serie D with Olbia in 2002 and C2 (in the playoffs) with Novara in 2003 concluded his personal treble as a coach with the conquest of Serie B in the shadow of Resegone.

A mortgaged promotion in the first leg at Zaccheria di Foggia winning 1-2, not without controversy for a goal disallowed and a penalty not granted to the Satanellis by referee Kevin Bonacina

(“I was aware that the match director was born in Lecco – commented the Serie C designator Maurizio Ciampi in recent days – but what matters is the section to which he belongs, which is Bergamo”) and which also ends on the most beautiful the other company of these playoffs, that of Foggia always forced to chase. He started badly in the league (after 7 days he was penultimate with 5 defeats) in the playoffs he always chased after, winning in extremis, at least up to this final: in the 87th minute with Potenza, even with two goals in added time against Cerignola (93rd and 96′), in the 84th minute in Crotone after being down by two goals, in the penalties to the bitter end in Pescara (first coming back in the 96th minute and then in the 115th minute in extra time).

At Rigamonti-Ceppi the comeback failed and it is a pity that one between Lecco and Foggia had to stop at the most beautiful after the playoffs to be framed. The bluceleste success, paradoxically, speaks half of Puglia since the most representative player, decisive in the first leg, is Checco Lepore from Lecce and who, above all, the patron Paolo Di Nunno is originally from Canosa di Puglia, a town about fifty kilometers from Foggia. Founder of Elettronica Video Games in Cormano, he made his way in the entrepreneurial field with video games. In the world of football fans, however, he made himself known in the quarter-finals of these playoffs with the invasion of the pitch in a wheelchair (due to walking problems) against Pordenone, which ended with the expulsion by the referee. In the end he won his bet – and this time the slot machines had nothing to do with it – in a city that never fully loved him: after taking over Lecco from bankruptcy, in the 2023-24 championship he will sit at the table of 20 presidents of the B series. Like, to blucelesti, it hasn’t happened since the days of Elvis Presley.