The number of players Hellas Verona used across the entire 1984-85 league season, at the end of which they were champions of Italy.
The league they won it in
Serie A in the mid eighties was the strongest league in the world and the richest. Diego Maradona had just arrived at Napoli. Michel Platini was at Juventus, Zico had been at Udinese, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge at Inter.
The championship had gone to Juventus, the two Milan clubs, Roma or Torino for most of the postwar period. Verona had never won it.
The squad
The club bought Hans-Peter Briegel, a West German defender built like a decathlete, which he had been, and Preben Elkjaer, a Danish forward who had been at Lokeren in Belgium.
Osvaldo Bagnoli was a Milanese who had spent his career in the lower divisions and did not give interviews if he could avoid it.
The season
Verona opened at home against Napoli on the day of Maradona's Italian debut and won three one, Briegel scoring the first goal of the season.
They went top and stayed there. Inter drew level for one day. Briegel scored nine league goals from defence, Elkjaer eight.
They were confirmed as champions with a match to spare.
Afterwards
Verona have not won the league since, and have spent long periods outside Serie A, including a fall to the third division in the early 2000s.
Bagnoli went on to Genoa and then Inter. He died in Verona in July 2026, aged ninety one, two weeks after his birthday.
Why seventeen
The number is on the print because it is the part that is hard to repeat. Every other club in that league could buy its way through a season. Verona used the same seventeen men and finished ahead of all of them.