Bologna returns to the Champions League after 60 years, the city turns red and blue and celebrates its heroes

Bologna celebrates the heroes of a season worth remembering with tens of thousands of fans, first following the open-top bus with the whole team on board around the city, then with the embrace of the rossoblù people in Piazza Maggiore. The return to Europe twenty-two years after the last experience beyond national borders, but this time from the main door of the Champions League, as did not happen instead for sixty years, had already been celebrated spontaneously by Bologna supporters in the same symbolic square of the city ten days ago, immediately after the final whistle at the end of Atalanta’s 2-1 win over Roma, which gave Thiago’s team mathematical qualification for the top continental competition Motta. Then, once the daring 3-3 draw against Juventus at the Dall’Ara was over, there was an encore, with the players walking around the pitch and the stadium celebrating, but on Wednesday evening Bologna and its team, almost on the eve of the last match of the season against Genoa, it was the moment of the official celebrations.

Before giving himself up to the city’s embrace, Mayor Matteo Lepore met with staff, staff and management to deliver the Golden Neptune, one of the most important awards under the towers; a civic merit awarded since 1974 to companies, citizens, institutions and cultural associations who have honored the city with their professional and public activity, with the delivery of an award consisting of a reproduction of the famous statue of Neptune placed on the homonymous statue fountain, undoubtedly one of the symbols of Bologna. Two special dedications for the occasion: one for Siniša Mihajlovićon the Emilian bench from 2019 to 2022, who passed away in the same year and never forgotten in these parts, and one for Davide Ferrerio, the young Bologna fan, in a coma for almost two years after a beating in Calabria. At the Dall’Ara Stadium, where the short ceremony took place, there was also his father, Massimiliano, who has always shared his son’s football faith.

Afterwards the procession and the actual celebration started, with the bus that from the square of the Curva Bulgarelli headed first towards Via Andrea Costa, then the streets of the centre, Via Indipendenza and arriving in the heart of the city, where to welcome the team there were at least twenty, if not thirty thousand people. Or perhaps even more, dedicating chants and banners for everyone, from Orsolini, now adopted by the city, as captain De Silvestri, nicknamed the mayor; by the talented striker Zirkzee, to Saelemaekers, Calafiori, Ferguson, Freuler and El Azzouzimore and more idols of the fans, up to, obviously, Mr. Motta, already with his bags packed according to rumors and the summer season now upon us.

Bologna’s last time in a European competition was the 2002/2003 season: on the pitch there were Beppe Signori, Pagliuca between the posts, Meghni, Locatelli, Nervo; on the bench, Francesco Guidolin. In the summer of 2002, by virtue of the 7th place won in the previous championship, the rossoblù club had the chance to earn participation in the UEFA Cup through the Intertoto Cup, a dream however that was shattered in the final against Fulham. It went decidedly better in 1999, when Bologna, who in that period in Europe was not that much of an exception, with Carletto Mazzone on the bench and Beppe always the goal-scoring team to lead the way (among other things, having just arrived after his farewell of Baggio), came close to achieving the feat in the UEFA Cup, arriving at it from the back door of the Intertoto, which on that occasion was raised to the sky. The rossoblù’s European dream came to a halt in the semi-final against Fabrizio Ravanelli’s Olympique Marseille, but that’s another story. The new chapter relating to Bologna’s adventure in Europe, however, is still to be written.