Chievo's 11 year stay in the Italian top flight came to an end and the writing looked on the wall very early on. A 3 point deduction for false accounting in September would actually be academic in the end as, even without that penalty, the Flying Donkeys would have comfortably gone down.
Lorenzo D’Anna was retained initially after keeping the club up in his short stint at the end of the the previous season but he was handicapped from the start. On top of the points deduction, he lost important players like top scorer Roberto Inglese, talented creator Lucas Castro and veterans like Massimo Gobbi, Alessandro Gamberini and Dario Dainelli. The effects were immediately felt as Chievo picked up just 1 point from their first 8 games of the season and D'Anna was let go.
To the surprise of many, the club appointed a man who was Public Enemy Number One across the whole country in Giampiero Ventura. The veteran coach was coming off a disastrous tenure with the Italian national team who he failed to take to the World Cup. It seemed a doomed venture from the outset and ultimately that's how it played out as Ventura quit the club after just 4 games and 1 point.
Chievo opted for a much more reliable appointment after Ventura as they brought back Domenico Di Carlo for a third spell at the helm. He had kept them up in the past but, despite some very respectable draws against the likes of Napoli, Lazio and Inter in his first few games in charge, the damage had already been done.
It took until just before the new year for Chievo to get their first league win and it would be the only one they'd get before their relegation was inevitably confirmed in mid-April.
In a season to forget, there weren't many standout performers. Stefano Sorrentino at 40 years old conceded the most goals in the league but somehow still managed to show his enduring quality - it was mostly the players in front of him that cost the team goals. The veteran produced a memorable performance to deny the great Cristiano Ronaldo a goal on his Serie A debut.
The club said goodbye to their greatest ever goalscorer in Sergio Pellissier who retires at 40 and that certainly adds to the feeling that it is the end of an era at Chievo.
