Foggia, Perina's pride: «Salvation desired with the heart»

In the playout it is vital to score but also not to concede goals. On the cover not only Emmausso, who scored the winning goal. The man of the match for Foggia, in the play-off against Messina, was also Pietro Perina, in tears at the end of the match. Half an hour into the second half, the Andria goalkeeper neutralized the penalty kicked by Luciani, the great chance that could have brought the Sicilians back into the game and then caused the Rossoneri to have a bad quarter of an hour.

It all happened in a few minutes, a symbol of how football can quickly overturn destinies, verdicts, emotions: Foggia went from the joy of the 2-0 that would have closed the game to the great fear of conceding a 1-1 and seeing ghosts again. The VAR disallowed Mazzocco's goal (for offside) and then called the referee Calzavara from Varese, who reviewed Parodi's intervention in the area on De Sena on the monitor and awarded the penalty. At the fateful moment of the match, Perina remained lucid, dived to his left and managed to push the Giallorossi centre forward's shot from eleven metres out into the corner with his legs. "It was a unique, indescribable emotion to save a penalty in the most important and delicate moment of the play-off and of the season," says the former Vicenza, Cosenza, Turris and Monopoli goalkeeper. "I was sure that Luciani would have chosen that corner. We played a great game last Saturday, confirming the good things we had shown in Messina in the first leg of the playout. Even in the return match we conceded little or nothing to our opponents, except for the penalty and the previous shot by Luciani himself, which I managed to save. I want to congratulate all my teammates: we had a complicated year, with more lows than highs. But in the end we managed to get out of the critical moment and achieve salvation. We gave it our all».

Born in 1992, Perina has been defending the goalposts of Foggia for a year and a half. His contract will expire in a month. "We gave our all to save this club and Serie C - adds the Rossoneri goalkeeper -. A place like Foggia and its fans deserve more: going down to Serie D would have been unbearable. The season was difficult, everything happened. Luckily there was a happy ending. I dedicate the salvation to Michele, Gaetano, Samuele and Samuel, the four young Foggia fans who died in the road massacre last October in Potenza. Unfortunately they are no longer with us, they lost their lives at a young age and would have liked to see Foggia at the top, become great again. I believe that on Saturday, from up there, they cheered along with the rest of the stadium and helped us beat Messina and earn permanence".

The last match of the season ended with a fine against the club (1500 euros for public intemperance including throwing bottles and smoke bombs onto the pitch, exploding firecrackers and a final invasion of the pitch by some fans hunting for shirts), a ban until June 6 and a one-match disqualification for team manager Valente and Tascone respectively for mutually incorrect behaviour, a one-day ban also for Mazzocco for accumulating warnings. The category has been saved, now another match opens that awaits news, the one related to the club's future ownership.