A quick look at the women’s Serie A table and there’s no initial surprise.
At the top sit Juventus, with eight wins from their first eight games, having won last season’s title without dropping a single point.
But then, one place below – above Milan, above Roma, above Inter and above Fiorentina – are Sassuolo. It’s not a position they hold by chance, either.
A club which only saw its men's team enter Serie A eight years ago, Sassuolo were just one point off Women’s Champions League football last season.
“It still burns inside them that they missed out,” forward Lana Clelland, who signed from Fiorentina this summer, tells GOAL.
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Their track record shows they have every chance of going one better this year, though. Sassuolo have finished ninth, seventh, fifth and third since being promoted to Serie A. Not bad for a team whose budget sits mid-table compared to league rivals.
“We ruined ourselves,” Alessandro Terzi, the club’s director of girls’ and women’s football development, laughs. “We came third, so now we have to do better!”
Getty/GoalThe women’s team has only been operating under Sassuolo’s name for five years, but they are one of the oldest teams in the top flight – older than Juventus, Milan, Roma and Inter – such has been the very recent progress of women’s football in Italy.
“The choice to invest came from a vision that we could see of the future,” Terzi explains. “For us, women's football has always been an opportunity and never an imposition that's coming from above.”
Starting in Serie B, one of the main objectives was to reach Serie A, but the investment wasn’t just in the first team. The club also focused on its youth sector and has grown from having just 12 girls playing to 233, from age six all the way up to the under-19s. “That is what makes us most proud,” Terzi says.
The achievement of both goals shows how well-run the club is. The team has its own facilities and its ground is right in the heart of Sassuolo. The latter is particularly important, given the club faced criticism for moving the men’s team away from the town when promoted to Serie A, needing a new home to abide by league requirements.
“It gives us a way of still being close to our supporters and having something to show them here in Sassuolo as well, to show them that Sassuolo is still important for us,” Alec Invernizzi, head of operations, adds. “And the women's team is helping us with the show that they're putting on, with the way they're doing.”
The team also has a family feel that is prominent beyond that local presence. Clelland has only been at Sassuolo for a few months, but she was well aware of the togetherness in the group from playing against them.
“They played good football, they believed in themselves. Every single game, they went to war and they went to war for each other,” she remembers.
Getty/Goal“I think especially in the last two seasons, with coach [Gianpiero] Piovani, he is getting the best out of people who maybe don't even believe in themselves. It's creating an environment where young players can come to this team and compete at the highest level.”
Haley Bugeja, who ranked at No.8 in this year’s women’s NXGN list, is among those teenage stars in a young squad that makes Clelland, only 28 years old, one of the “experienced” heads. “I’m not going to say old!” she laughs.
The Scotland international is among those helping to bring balance to a talented group that has real promise, particularly given the atmosphere around it.
“The coach was wanted by a lot of teams this year and Sassuolo managed to get him to sign a long-term deal,” she says. “I think that just shows how much the club want to continually push forward and keep going in the right direction, which is massive.
“My mum and dad were here at the weekend and my mum said thanks to the coach 'because Lana has got a smile on her face again.'
“Sometimes, football can get a bit much when it does become professional. You're going because you have to go.
“Whereas sometimes after training, the coach has to peel us off the pitch, because we want to be there, we want to learn and we want to keep getting better. I think that just explains the environment that we are in.”
Getty/GoalThe well-performing team is built on a foundation of genuine support from the club. Not only does that show in facilities and professionalism, but also in actual interest.
Board members know who the players are and they want them at events. They value feedback on what they can do to improve things for them.
All of that means that this is a project moving in an incredibly promising direction. However, no one is getting carried away.
“[At the start of the season], the coach drilled into us about getting enough points so that we would be safe,” Clelland says. “I think we've achieved that now and it's more a case of a game at a time.
“For instance, this week, we go to Napoli, which is not going to be an easy game at all. But we know we need three points because then we go into the Juventus game with the chance to go level on points if we win.
“I think it's just a case of taking each game at a time, not having an objective but driving towards something that could be great.”
Sassuolo might not have the big name like Juventus or Milan but, with the work they have done and continue to do, they are more than earning their place in the upper echelons of that Serie A table.
Soon, it could land them a spot among Europe’s elite, too.