Boyhood Parma Calcio supporter Alessio Rinaldi led his hometown club to the second-best finish in its history, as I Crociati finished in an incredible 3rd place in Serie A in 2026. That meant Rinaldi now faced a massive challenge to bolster a threadbare squad for an unexpected step up to the Champions League.
Fresh from a 4-1 win at Udinese on the final day of the 2025/26 campaign, Rinaldi sat down for a few glasses of vino with his good friend and mentor Filippo Galli. The club’s Head of Methodology was feeling smug in the success of the man he’d earmarked as the club’s replacement for Cristian Chivu, who’d been sacked just five months into life at Inter Milan. Rinaldi believed that last season had been a freak overperformance, and was expecting a dropoff in season two.
Parma earned £18m for their league finish, which more than doubled the club’s bank balance. Rinaldi boosted that by moving on players he didn’t fancy, selling midfielder Mandela Keita to Saudi for £7.5m, winger Jacob Ondrejka to Dusseldorf for £2.5m, striker Matija Frigan to Verona for £3.8m and wantaway centre back Lautaro Valenti to Boca for £4m. They also lost regular starters Cutroni and Oristanio and backup Cremaschi as their loans expired,
Rinaldi’s first move was to bring in Chelsea striker Marc Guiu on loan for the season. He also snapped up promising midfielders Luca Lipani and Luis Engelns for £8m and £3.1m from Sassuolo and Paderborn, while midfielder Bailey Rice, who went on loan to Ascoli, and centre back Perr Schuurs arrived on free transfers. He later added versatile full back Elias Baum for £4m from Frankfurt and loaned in Jonah Kusi-Asare from Bayern. And the recruitment was topped off by bringing in winger Ansu Fati on loan from Barcelona.
Rinaldi toyed with the idea of moving to a back three for the upcoming season. That was until the signing of Fati, which coninced him to stick with something similar to last season’s 4-3-3, but with an eye on making the instructions a little more progressive.
A Tough Start to Season 2
The bookies didn’t fancy Parma’s transfer activity, predicting them to finish 13th with title odds of 350/1. For some reason, Inter, who finished 12th last season, are 3/1 favourites along with Juventus, followed by Napoli (7/2), AC Milan (6/1), Roma (9/1) and Atalanta (25/1).
Parma began the campaign with a trip to Pisa and went behind with some dreadful defending after 8 minutes. Rinaldi laid into the team and got a response as debutant striker Brenner turned and finished nicely 10 minutes after the break. Parma completely dominated the game by 23 shots to 8 but couldn’t score and were frustrated to draw 1-1. Their first home game saw Bologna come to town and dominate for large periods. However, Guiu scored two excellent goals that were swiftly cancelled out both times. A tricky start continued with a 3-1 defeat at Atalanta before hosting Fiorentina, who won a penlty after 16 seconds, still managed to score twice in the first half and went on to win 3-0 despite having 7 fewer shots.
Those struggles forced Rinaldi into a change of approach, moving to more of a 3-4-3. The first snow of the winter arrived for the visit of Juventus, who started the game brighter before Parma hit the post with Lipani’s long ranger. They took a battering by 20 shots to 5 but held out for a 0-0 that took them five without a win to start the season. Another tough game followed at Roma, which saw Schuurs and Fati hit the post in the first half. And, after getting battered by 21 shots to 7, they eventually got undone by a Roma shot bouncing off the post to give Dybala an open goal in the 94th minute.
Another away day followed at Udinese, who had last season’s loan star Cutrone up front. Parma started well as centre back Enrico Delpatro headed home the opener and a brilliant run down the left saw Guiu lay Fati’s first goal of the season on a plate. They added a third as Bernabé’s corner was flicked on by Mateo Pellegrino for Guiu to head in, and they finally wrapped up a first league win.
Parma built on that with Guiu’s early header earning a 1-0 win at home to Lecce, who they again allowed to have 21 shots. A similar story followed at Milan, who had 20 shots, but Parma somehow held out for a 0-0. And they took an absolute battering at home to Genoa, who racked up 14 shots in 35 minutes, only for Fati to break away and cross for Guiu to tap in and Pellegrino to swiftly end his goal drought from a Baum cross. That seemingly gave the new Spaniard a bit of confidence as he scored twice in a 3-2 win at Lazio, before an apparent stroke of genius as Rinaldi threw Schuurs on as a makeshift target man and he nicked the only goal late into a tight game at home to Monza.
Rinaldi was really concerned by Parma’s performances as, even when they were winning, they were gifting 20 shots per match. So he ripped up the tactical approaches he’d been working on and plugged in a new version of last year’s 4-3-3. That saw Parma begin to grow into form, including an excellent 2-0 win over Como inspired by a wonderful Pellegrino goal before wrapping up 2026 with a dominant 3-0 victory at Palermo and a 3-1 win over Sampdoria.
And all of a sudden, that strong run had Parma sitting pretty in 4th place heading into the new year. They’d only lost three times, but only scored 22 and conceded 14 in 16 games, thanks largely to the performances of Zion Suzuki again. The goalkeeper had the most clean sheets (8), the most saves (88), by far the best xG prevented (1.4) and 7.21 saves per 90 minutes. Meanwhile, Inter were back on track and still undefeated.
Massive Champions League Challenge
Parma took a step into the unknown as they took part in the Champions League for the first time since 2002. The size of the task they faced was portrayed by the bookies giving Parma 6,000/1 odds to win their first Champions League! And they didn’t get a nice set of fixtures, which included hosting holders Man City and visiting Real Madrid.
First up was a huge game as they ravelled to Club Brugge and started well as Brenner steered home after a lovely move. And that was all they needed for a 1-0 victory (with stats oddly not working!) A much tougher game followed as Parma entertained Man City, who unsurprisingly scored through Haaland. Parma held out until 76 minutes, when Haaland added a second with a lucky deflected goal and they scored two more, including a fourth that was miles offside!
Parma were a little unlucky to lose 1-0 at Porto before Guiu’s early goal put them ahead against Villarreal and he doubled his tally from a Fati cross. However, they conceded twice in 10 minutes to throw away the lead. A daunting trip to Real Madrid followed, and the hosts got very lucky with a nonsense penalty then a deflected shot before cruising to a 4-0 win. Parma again threw away a two-goal lead to draw at home to Galatasaray, leaving them sitting 28th in the league phase, just 1 point behind Benfica in the final qualification place.
Despite the slight tactical issues, Parma had dug in and build a solid run of form. Rinaldi was extremely thankful to Suzuki for keeping their opponents out, but knew they needed to prevent teams from having shots at will through the remainder of the season.
Could Parma maintain their league overperformance and possibly sneak into the Champions League knockouts? Join us on Friday to find out!
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