“Chievo is back”. Sergio Pellissier announced it with this phrase and a photo of the club’s historic crest. Three years after his death, Chievo will return to play in a national championship, which at the moment would be Serie D. It was a “fairytale” of our football, capable of climbing the lowest regional categories to become a cult team of the Serie A of the 2000s, which then ended badly. With the exclusion from professionalism in 2021 and the failure that materialized in June 2022. Today, Friday 10 May, Sergio Pellissier (who scored 139 goals in 517 appearances with that shirt) won the auction to take over all the brands related to Chievo Verona and can bring it back to life. Three summers ago he started again from the Third Category with a new club, Clivense, which arrived in D after acquiring the title of Excellence and winning the championship. Now he will be able to merge it with the legacy of Chievo, but every step, from the name to the new colours, will be decided together with the members. Getting it back was not at all easy, on the contrary, it had to win the auction with its former president Luca Campedelli.
THE DUEL FOR CHIEVO
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At the beginning of his adventure as president, Pellissier would have liked to call the new club “Chievo 2021”, but a warning from Luca Campedelli pushed him towards Clivense. Meanwhile the club’s trademark ended up at auction. No one participated in the first two due to too high demand. The initial one was for half a million, the subsequent one for 285 thousand euros. On the third round, with a starting bid of 100 thousand euros, Pellissier took to the field. For weeks he was the only bidder until shortly before the deadline expired (10 May at 12) the managers of Vigasio (Verona) decided to participate. This is not just any club: it has recently been promoted to Serie D and its honorary president is Luca Campedelli, former number one of Chievo. The men from Vigasio and Pellissier found themselves face to face around 3pm in the office of the bankruptcy trustee (while some fans of the North Side 1994 group were present outside), who opened the envelopes at that time. At the end of a tight auction, for 330 thousand euros, Chievo’s legacy returned to the hands of its most iconic player, now president, who celebrated as in his most important goals.
