History of the troubled relationship between Ternana and its president.
On 21 June 2017, after 13 years of Longarini presidency, Ternana Calcio officially became the property of Stefano Bandecchi. Entrepreneur from Livorno, fifty-six years old, Bandecchi comes from three years of presidency at Fondi, a club then known as Unicusan Fondi Calcio, from the name of theTelematic university founded in 2006 by Bandecchi himself. Bandecchi immediately wanted to imprint his brand on the new club and so he changed the historic name of Ternana Calcio 1925 to Unicusano Ternana, generating quite a stir and a lot of hostility in the red-and-green fans. His bombastic announcements of “series A in 2 years”, however, end up placating spirits and channeling support on his side.
From the first moment Bandecchi revolutionized not only the corporate organization chart, but also the club’s policy regarding the composition of the squad, importing a nationalist idea that he had already applied to Fondi: Ternana would be made up of only Italians. Despite the high expectations, however, the first season of Bandecchi’s Ternana is bankruptcy and the club reaches the headlines more for the xenophobic statements del neoallenatore Sandro Pochesci – loyal to Bandecchi and the patron Ranucci, who had already had him in Fondi – and for the results achieved. The season ends with the relegation from Serie B, in which Ternana had been playing for 5 seasons, with two coach changes and 77 goals conceded. The only happy note is the return derby won in a comeback from 0-2 to 3-2 away against historic rivals Perugia.
Relegation and the pandemic
In the following summer, between 2018 and 2019, the first crucial point in the relationship between Bandecchi and the Ternana fans. The President, penitent for relegation, gives the club back its old name, relegating Unicusano to shirt sponsor, and promises again to bring the team back to the series that belonged to it. Once again, however, the sporting results do not reflect the promises and Ternana is forced into an interim season which will end with 11th place in Lega Pro. The following season, characterized by the long stop due to Covid, goes a bit It’s better, but despite reaching the play-offs, the team misses promotion to Serie B.
The second turning point in the relationship between Bandecchi and Terni has to do with the pandemic. The entrepreneur spends himself personally buying personal protective equipment for doctors and citizens of Terni and giving financial aid to people and companies in difficulty through the charity “Terni col Cuore”. Bandecchi therefore begins a build your own public image as an entrepreneur and philanthropistgradually untying it from its sporting role and laying the foundations for its own ascent.
The Lucarelli management and the return to B
The 2020/21 season is that of the sporting breakthrough of the Bandecchi management. Under the technical guidance of Cristiano Lucarelli the team finally gets the promotion in Serie B. He does it in style and with several records for Serie C: highest number of points in a single championship (91), highest gap on the runners-up (22 points over Catanzaro), highest number of total and away wins . The goal difference is +63, with 95 goals scored and 32 conceded. The icing on the cake of that season is the victory of the Serie C Super Cupwon by beating just the Perugia for 1-0 with the goal of Aniello Salzano.
Public opinion, also thanks to the sporting results, becomes more and more lenient towards the entrepreneur from Livorno. Furthermore, on the non-football side, Bandecchi has expanded his interests by purchasing land in the areas surrounding the Liberati stadium to build a sports-shopping complex with shops and an area intended for red and green fans. At the same time, he is planning the construction of a new stadium and a training center in the outlying areas of the city of Terni, to provide Ternana with a new home in step with the times and which guarantees an increase in profits for the company.
The latter project is closely linked to the creation of a Medical clinic which, in the entrepreneur’s ideas, should include various specialist clinics and 203 beds, half of which have agreements with the region. It is precisely the obstructionism of the regional council – which recognizes various formal flaws in the project for the construction of the clinic – one of the reasons that prompts Bandecchi to hypothesize first and then realize entry into the political scene ternana.
Meanwhile, when the 2021/22 Serie B championship resumes, Ternana is a candidate as a possible outsider given the glittering season from which it comes. To drive it players like Cesar Falletti and especially Anthony Partipilo, protagonists in C with 17 goals each and looking for definitive consecration. After a slow start, Ternana begins to show the already known strengths, but also shortcomings that had not emerged in Serie C: the defensive fragility, for example, which at the end of the season will make Ternana the second worst defense in the championship , with 61 goals conceded on an equal footing with Crotone and better only than Pordenone.
Ternana ends the championship in tenth place in the standings, not qualifying for the play-offs. The play-offs which were the announced objective, and which in the end the team narrowly missed (just 4 points away from Frosinone) with a final comeback that saved Lucarelli’s bench, questioned several times by Bandecchi in the arc of the season.
The 2022 of Bandecchi and Ternana
In the summer of 2022 Bandecchi received honorary citizenship from Terni for his commitment during the pandemic with the organization “Terni col cuore”. In the meantime, all the hesitations shown during the year through his very active Instagram profile translate into a sort of ultimatum signed by Cristiano Lucarelli. An agreement with which the coach undertakes to reach the minimum objective of the play-offs and to do so with an offensive game, even by applying specific modules (“a team that has its maximum expression playing 4-3-2-1, 4 -2-3-1, 3-4-3 or 4-3-3» reads one of the most surreal passages of the document).
The red-and-green fans, very fond of Cristiano Lucarelli after the two seasons on the bench, are divided between supporters of Bandecchi’s ideas and those who deem unacceptable the treatment reserved for the coach in promoting records. After a new slow-motion start – with Lucarelli questioned again – Ternana however gets going, finds five consecutive victories and reaches the top of the Serie B standings. It does so to general amazement, given the unexpected quality shown by the team in the offensive game, driven by an Antonio Palumbo author of 2 goals and 3 assists in that cycle of victories between September and October.
Ternana’s golden period also coincides with a Bandecchi’s growing commitment on the Terni public scene. The Pala Terni, the shopping center wanted by Bandecchi, is about to see the light. The “Ternanello” sports center, on the other hand, once discussed in the municipal council, is blocked due to problems related to the project area. A similar hitch also stops the clinic-stadium project. Bureaucratic slowdowns lead Bandecchi to found the party Popular alternative and to publicly announce his candidacy for the subsequent municipal elections of Terni. At the end of 2022, after a negative trend, Bandecchi sacked Lucarelli and replaced him with the expert Andreazzoli.
From disengagement to spitting to fans
The decision to remove Lucarelli accentuates the rift with the Ternana fans. The faction most opposed to Bandecchi contested that he had lacked respect for the coach and acted recklessly (at the time of Lucarelli’s exemption, Ternana was in 7th place). The climate between Bandecchi and the fans worsens, but this is not what disturbs the president’s dreams: in mid-January they are kidnapped assets for 20 million from the Guardia di Finanza for tax evasion.
Bandecchi declares himself innocent, but inevitably the situation also affects Ternanato which it comes the winter transfer market is blocked and prevented from carrying out incoming operations – some operations were already planned, according to Bandecchi. The investigation prompts the directors of the Niccolò Cusano Telematic University to force Bandecchi to leave Ternana, considered a secondary activity, in order to protect the University’s assets. Thus we come to the last two weeks of February, the last turning point in this tortuous affair.
Bandecchi leaves the role of president e sells the company, but the ways in which the transfer will take place are not clear: Bandecchi first announces that he wants to remain as a minority shareholder and that he wants to keep Unicusano as the main sponsor, then declares that he has received offers for 100% of the shares. Among many rumors and denials around unlikely exotic buyers, on 22 February the reference channel of Unicusano Tag24 announced that there is a negotiation in the pipeline for the transfer of the sports club to a mysterious group. To guide it, according to the most reliable sourcestwo Italian-American entrepreneurs: Francis Guardascione e Anthony DiLauro.
It only takes 48 hours for the cards on the table to change again. A new press release on the same channel announces that Bandecchi has rejected the offer to sell 100% since he would prefer to sell only 50% of the shares and keep the majority. Later Bandecchi himself says that a meeting with some entrepreneurs from Terni and messages from various players convinced him of the decision.
On the pitch, Andreazzoli’s Ternana, after a badly lost derby 3-0, suffered another home defeat against Cittadella after which the Tuscan coach resigned. The match with the Cittadella represents the pinnacle of tension between Bandecchi and Terni. At the end of the match, the president passes under the curve facing the enraged fans and their insults with a bold, almost provocative attitude. Bandecchi, who has never backed down from even heated confrontations, and who has already received insults and even objects from the curve in the past, does not shy away from the confrontation with the insults that rain down on him this time either. He face to face with the fans, he receives two spits, which he promptly reciprocates.
The rest is known history. Starting with the shootings in the press conference after the match: «The Terni will never receive my apologies. If they spit on me, I spit on them.” The apologies will then come during the Radio Deejay broadcast with Caressa and Zazzaroni. A few days later he will arrive to tell alla Journal to look like Thanos, the Marvel character who aims to solve the problem of global overpopulation by exterminating half of the population. “Everyone thinks he’s the baddest and instead he’s a real man. The most pragmatic,” said Bandecchi of Thanos.
Bandecchi’s Ternana may not go to Serie A this year either, but certainly thanks to his proprietary volcanic it will not fail to appear in the national news, for better or for worse. Rai 3 broadcast Report seems to already have in the pipeline a service on the red-green team. While awaiting the achievement of the second consecutive salvation in the Serie B championship, Terni will not sleep peacefully. Corporate developments e municipal elections scheduled for May-June 2023 could provide new material to supporters and detractors of the red-green Thanos.