Castel di Sangro 1995-98: The team that came from nowhere
- Graham Dunn
- Sep 10, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 3, 2025
Few football stories feel as unbelievable as Castel di Sangro 1995–1998 — a team that literally and figuratively came from nowhere. Rising from Italy’s amateur leagues to Serie B, this tiny Abruzzo club defied logic, survived tragedy, and even staged one of football’s strangest hoaxes. It’s a story of miracles, mischief, and misfortune that could only happen in 1990s Italian football.
Literally is an over-used word. It is literally rarely used correctly*. Especially when it comes to football superlatives.
But there is a case for saying for Castel di Sangro came both figuratively and literally out of nowhere to shock the Italian football world in the 1990s, in the process producing arguably the biggest and most surreal non-transfer story ever.
Castel di Sangro is a remote town nestled in the Apennine mountain range in Abruzzo. The town has a population of around 6,000. Literally everyone in the town could sit in the club’s Stadio Teafilo Patini ground, and there would still be more than 1,000 empty seats.
The club, established in 1953, was also nowhere in the Italian football pyramid. More accurately it was somewhere; it was at the bottom multiple tiers down.
But three men changed the fortunes of the club. Pietro Rezza, Gabriele Gravina and Osvaldo Jaconi.
Naples-based businessman Rezza came in after Castel di Sangro achieved their first-ever promotion in 1983. He provided the financial muscle to guide the club on its rise through the leagues. He also appointed his niece’s nephew Gravina to run it. Gravina, a lawyer by trade, was to go on his own meteoric rise up the football pyramid to run the Italian football association.
This was a hoax pitched somewhere between publicity stunt and performance art
Castel di Sangro steadily improved. Within a few years they had reached the professional echelons of Serie C2 – the fourth tier of Italian football. At this point Jaconi was appointed manager. A journeyman and lower-league promotion specialist , his 11 promotions is an Italian record. Jaconi was like an Italian Neil Warnock, managing, usually a different club, almost every season over a 40-year career.
Jaconi took Castel di Sangro up to Serie C3 in his first full season in charge in 1995, and then incredibly to Serie B the following year. The latter promotion was clinched with roll-of-the dice gambles in the last minutes of both play-off games, notably including potentially one of the first instances of substituting a keeper specifically for the winning penalty shoot-out.
It was at this point the story gained more prominence and notoriety, when hard-hitting US journalist and author Joe McGinniss spent Castel di Sangro’s debut season in Serie B embedded with the team. The Miracle of Castel di Sangro became a football classic and much of what is known about the story is owed to McGinniss.
On the pitch, Castel di Sangro defied the odds and somehow avoided relegation, no easy task given four teams went down in a league of 20. That was driven by their home form, 11 of their 12 wins that season came at home. That is even more impressive as they didn’t play at home until halfway through the season amid delays in upgrading their ground to meet Serie B criteria.
It is though off the pitch, where a mix of tragic, murky and surreal events played out.
Tragically Castel di Sangro lost two players, Danilo Di Vincenzo and Pippo Biondi, when they were killed in a car crash in December 1996. They were also without defender Gigi Prete, who was arrested in connection with a drug smuggling operation. He was acquitted 22 weeks later.
As small fish in a big pond, Castel di Sangro were out of their depth. But it looked like much needed reinforcements were on the way when Gravina held a press conference to unveil a marquee signing, Nigerian former Leicester City forward Robert Ponnick. Castel di Sangro were hitting the big time with the arrival of a English Premier League striker.
Leicester fans will already be smelling a rat at this point. These days any signing, however remote, can swiftly be half-gauged by a google search and a few YouTube highlights. But in 1996, it was harder to fact-check these things, and with little reason for fans and the media to think Ponnick was not who he said he was, there was great excitement for Ponnick’s debut in Castel di Sangro colours at a mysterious hastily arranged friendly arranged to also mark the reopening of Stadio Teafilo Patini.
Within minutes it was evident Ponnick was not a footballer, and certainly not a Premier League standard player. But this was no Ali ‘George Weah’s cousin’ Dia player/agent grifting. This was a hoax pitched somewhere between publicity stunt and performance art. Ponnick was a London-based actor. The opposition were actors. The referee was an actor. The Castel di Sangro players played cameos of themselves.
Ponnick played the lead role in style, culminating in wrestling the ball from the regular penalty taker (football life has since gone on to imitate art) to take a spot-kick. Ponnick began his run up, feigned a hamstring injury, then went ahead took the penalty when the keeper wasn’t looking. Ponnick was sent off and then returned to the pitch to take his curtain call.
Quite what Castel di Sangro gained from the hoax, beyond publicity is not entirely clear. There certainly was no Premier League striker signing happy ending.
The club was nowhere in the Italian football pyramid. More accurately it was somewhere; it was at the bottom multiple tiers down
Neither was there a happy ending to McGinniss’ season with the club. Instead, the story ends with his allegations that, having secured their Serie B status with one game to play, Castel di Sangro’s 3-1 defeat to Bari was fixed to ensure the latter would be promoted. The allegations were never proven. But this was Italian football in the 1990s.
The following season the dream was over and normal service was resumed. Castel di Sangro finished rock-bottom, Jaconi was sacked and moved on to guide more teams to promotion.
There was to be no return to the heights of Serie B and by 2005 the club had collapsed. The latest iteration of the club, Castello 2000, is plying its trade in Italy’s Girone Abruzzese B, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Italy’s football pyramid.
*I literally don’t know what the correct use of literally is any more after seeing this Why editors are 'literally' changing the dictionary - BBC News which seems to be saying Jamie Redknapp was right when he said, “in his youth, Michael Owen was literally a greyhound”.
How We Ranked Them
We have five categories of greatness from our five-star All-Time Greats category at the top to our one-star Blinkered Greats category at the bottom. Absolutely classic.
*
BLINKERED GREATS
Listen To The Podcast
Join hosts Graham Dunn and Jamie Rooney — with underdog correspondent Gus Krasonis — as they uncover the incredible rise and fall of Castel di Sangro 1995–1998, the tiny Abruzzo club that took Italy by storm before spiralling into tragedy and absurdity.
This one has defeated me. No Italian players have ever graced Oxford colours. The closest I can get is Billy Bodin. No he’s not Italian, nor playing in the middle of nowhere in Italy. But he is now plying his trade in the remotest of remote football surrounds. Swindon Town.
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