Vanoli Cremona, breeze of farewell: candidates for repechage
Vanoli Cremona is preparing to take the court Sunday at 5 p.m. at PalaRadi against Reyer Venezia, in what could be the last home game in its history. There is no official announcement yet on the end of the project, but the climate suggests that the epilogue is near, as the newspaper ‘Il Giorno’ also points out. The defeat against Varese, among other things, has practically extinguished playoff hopes.
The value, however, of a long and significant path, built by Aldo Vanoli in more than two decades as sponsor and 16 years as sole owner, remains. A history marked by important sports feats, such as the Italian Cup won in 2019 in Florence and the “grand slam” in A2. A project that had already risked stopping during the pandemic and that now really seems to have reached its final chapter.
Cremona is among the options for the landing of Roma 2 (it should not be forgotten that there is also Virtus, now in the national B) in A. Should Trieste be chosen, however, and Vanoli throw in the towel without a buyer there would be one more place for the top series, and hypotheses are beginning to circulate: the second relegated (one among Sassari, the biggest suspect, Treviso and Cantù) or the loser of the A2 playoffs that are about to kick off.
The feeling in the city is one of deep gratitude to the patron. This is also testified by La Provincia di Cremona, which dedicated touching words on the eve of this game: “I will never stop writing and thinking about it: we just have to be grateful to Aldo Vanoli for what he has done in favor of Cremonese basketball, for the coaches and players he has hired and who have walked the parquet of PalaRadi and then reached top stages at the European level.” An appeal, that of journalist Daniele Duchi, to fill the PalaRadi on Sunday and to give the president a big round of applause, “who is living this moment with pride for what he has done but also with suffering for an epilogue that, I assure you, even he would not have wanted.”
This is not the first time that the Vanoli project has found itself on the brink of the abyss. Back in May 2020, at the height of the pandemic, the president had sounded a dramatic alarm: “Right now, the budget available does not guarantee that we can plan for the season and championship registration.” On that occasion Vanoli also made it clear that selling the sports title would be “the extreme option,” reiterating his desire to keep the title in the territory. That time the storm was weathered; today the scenario appears far more definitive.
