What’s wrong with Sampdoria?

“Families are always rising and falling in America,” said Billy Costigan to Detectives Queenan and Dignam in Martin Scorcese’s masterpiece The Departed. It’s a quote that feels befitting of provincial Italian football clubs, as well as US society.

It was paraphrased from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House Of The Seven Gables, a 19th century novel set in New England, several thousand miles from Genoa, the home of Sampdoria, a club that once rose and has now fallen. Hard.

The 1990/91 scudetto winners and one-time European Cup finalists were relegated to Serie B in 2023, winning three games all season and picking up only nineteen points, coming close to Ancona’s record low of thirteen in 2003/04.

Sampdoria entered the 2023/24 season in around €175m debt, a figure reduced vastly thanks to a restructure agreed between the club’s new owners, Gestio Capital, and the various creditors and authorities awaiting payment. 

It has since come to light that the majority of the club’s shareholding belongs to a group of Singaporean investors best known for their involvement in FUN88, the illegal betting company. Their ownership was uncovered by Josimar, the investigative journalists, who have found that almost €100m has been invested into the club without a clear benefit or expected return.

This issue is complicated further by the Italian state’s Dignity Decree (Decreto Dignità) which effectively prohibits football clubs from taking gambling companies’ money. The gambling ads you might see on the digital hoardings at stadiums require the clubs to work around the rules, to put it politely. 

What this means for Sampdoria is as yet unclear, but one might expect a formal investigation into the club’s ownership situation given the lack of transparency to this point. For now, there are more pressing concerns, such as a second relegation in three years. 

At the time of writing, Samp are 16th in Serie B, occupying one of the relegation play-out spots. They are separated from direct relegation by only a point and it looks like being an incredibly tense final third of the season. They will search for salvation from Serie C while needing something much greater: promotion.

Most would have predicted Sampdoria to repeat their play-off run of last season, or perhaps to build on it with a challenge at the top. This time last year, they were 15th with 28 points - three more than they have now. 

Everything clicked for Samp in February 2024. Manuel De Luca started scoring, Patjim Kasami delivered several game changing performances and Fabio Borini returned from a three month layoff to provide valuable experience. They combined with Inter loanee Sebastiano Esposito to drag their team into the play-offs, where they lost to Palermo in the preliminary round.

De Luca left for Cremonese last summer, Kasami has been released and Borini fell out of favour, a result of the turmoil that began when Sampdoria sacked Andrea Pirlo three games into 2024/25.

Still, Samp had recruited aggressively and expectations were high. Experienced from Serie A arrived in defenders Simone Romagnoli and Lorenzo Venuti. Gennaro Tutino and Massimo Coda joined, two strikers who scored 36 Serie B goals between them in 2023/24, and Samp also added the usual loanees from the top clubs, such as Inter midfielder Ebenezer Akinsanmiro.

All of these signings pointed towards a successful campaign, but the club panicked when Pirlo failed to win any of the first three league games. His replacement, Andrea Sottil, was presented as an experienced replacement capable of guiding the Blucerchiati to a promotion they need to achieve sooner rather than later, for both sporting and financial reasons.

Sottil won four of his first seven league games and beat their fierce rivals Genoa in the Coppa Italia second round, but a six game winless run cost him his job in early December. Sampdoria moved on to Leonardo Semplici, their third coach of the season in just seventeen games.

Things haven’t improved drastically under Semplici, with a win and five draws from eight games, but they have suffered the loss of Tutino to injury and a continually changing playing squad. 

Sporting director Pietro Accardi took over from Andrea Mancini, son of Roberto, last summer and has made a concerted effort to build his own side and shift the remaining dead wood from the catastrophic relegation season. 

The Italian state’s Dignity Decree prohibits football clubs from taking gambling companies’ money.

It’s no surprise that Samp have signed eleven players in January, or that last week’s debut of Samuele Perisan made him the fourth goalkeeper to start for the team this season. All four were signed by Accardi in the past six months, and they’ve signed another two ‘keepers in Alessio Cragno and Niccolò Chiorra just this week.

There will be mistakes in recruitment, often you have teething problems when you get a new sporting director and three managers in the space of a few months, but Samp’s recent decline has come at a time when many expected them to bounce back.

37 clubs have played in Serie A since 2015 and it feels like only the most elite clubs, those in the top eight, ever feel truly safe from relegation. 

Financial trouble, poor recruitment and boardroom turmoil have taken teams down in recent years. In Sampdoria’s case, it was all of the above. The boardroom issues still feel unresolved even after the sale in 2023.

The previous owner, Massimo Ferrero, was charged with fraudulent bankruptcy in 2021 and it was the melodrama surrounding him that most would argue sealed Samp’s fate in 2022/23. Gestio Capital’s takeover, headed by Andrea Radrizzani and Matteo Manfredi should have put an end to that instability and ushered in a new era.

Four months after ‘saving’ the club, Radrizzani was quietly ushered aside and sold his shares with only a solitary line in a Manfredi press conference several months later to show as a tribute. The questionable source of funds mentioned above remains a sore point. These things never disappear quietly in Italy, or in modern football generally, but when it involves potential financial gain at the expense of another club, all bets are off.

Sampdoria need promotion this year to make the long term project viable. Nobody makes money in Serie B, let alone the third tier which looms over their shoulder like the Grim Reaper. The weekend’s win over Cosenza is a decent place to start, but it’s going to take a miracle to drag them up into the play-offs and back into Serie A, just like the one that saw them saved from almost certain bankruptcy less than two years ago.

The fallen Sampdoria have threatened to rise again on multiple occasions across the past two seasons, but the brief moments of optimism resemble that of a punch drunk boxer needing a knockout in the twelfth round. They’ve got a puncher’s chance, but very few would back them to land it. 

Sampdoria need their season to kick into gear right now, just as it did twelve months ago, starting with Modena at home on Saturday afternoon. If not, they may well face financial and sporting armageddon this summer.