Parma Football Club (formerly Parma Associazione Calcio), commonly referred to as just Parma, is an Italian professional football club based in Parma, Emilia–Romagna that is competing in Serie A for the 2011–12 season, having finished in twelfth position last season. Founded as Verdi Foot Ball Club in July 1913, the club changed its name in December of the same year. Parma have played their home matches in the 27,906-seat Stadio Ennio Tardini, often referred to as simply Il Tardini, since 1923.
Although Parma have never won a domestic league title and never competed for major trophies until the 1990s, they have won three Italian Cups and one Supercoppa Italiana, as well as two UEFA Cups, one European Super Cup and one UEFA Cup Winners' Cup. The club won all eight of these trophies between 1992 and 2002, a period in which it is also achieved its best ever league finish – as runners-up in the 1996–97 season – and threatened the dominance of the league's established powers: Juventus, Milan and Internazionale, now the only Italian sides to have had more success in European competition than Parma.
More recently, Parma's financial troubles – brought on in late 2003 by the Parmalat scandal which caused the parent company to collapse and resulted in the club operating in controlled administration until January 2007 – have limited the club's ambitions. Although the team does not have the firepower to compete for a place in Europe, nor is it weak enough to be relegated. The club's tradition demand the team to play attractive football and to develop younger players through the club's academy and is seen as something of an 'oasis of happiness'. Despite the recent downturn in success, Parma is an associated member and one of eight Italian clubs that are part of the European Club Association, a collection of Europe's most elite clubs representing clubs at a continental level, formed after the dissolution of the G-14.
