Manchester City‘s owners, City Football Group, have announced the purchase of former Serie A side, Parma, for a fee of just under €100,000. The trophies will be placed in City’s brand new trophy cabinet, which was upgraded in 2012 in order to hold multiple trophies.
Italian side Parma went bankrupt last month and have been forced to sell all trophies including 2 UEFA Cups and the European Cup Winner’s Cup after all assets were liquidated. Parma confirmed that a host of clubs around the world declared an interest in buying the trophies. “Yes, many clubs including Chelsea, PSG and Blackburn Rovers were very interested,” said club president, Lilian Thuram, “however those clubs could not compete with Man City’s desire to buy trophies, no matter how many chickens one club offered.”
Former Parma legend, Hernan Crespo was deeply saddened by the news: “No one likes to think of Parma as a selling club. It’s completely against their nature.”
Over 100,000 City fans are expected to line the streets of Manchester next Monday, as City parade their new trophies through Manchester’s city centre. One “die hard” City fan said seeing Vincent Kompany lift the Coppa Italia will be a “dream come true”. “Even when I used to support Chelsea, Man United, and even Blackburn for one season, I always dreamt of seeing City lift Parma’s UEFA Cup,” he said.
The new trophies bring City’s overhaul collection to 13 since the Abu Dhabi United Group. “It is another great day in the short history of our football club,” said City owner, Sheikh Mansour. “When I founded this club in 2008, who could have imagined that in 7 short years we would have 3 Coppa Italia’s and 2 UEFA cups? Now we finally have an answer to United’s ‘you can’t buy history’ song…Yes you can.”
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