History weighed heavily on Cremonese as they arrived in La Spezia in search of the victory that booked their return to Serie A for the first time in two years.

“We know perfectly well that only one result will do,” Giovanni Stroppa said when asked to evaluate his side’s prospect of winning promotion through the play-offs.

A draw in Cremona meant Spezia would be back in the top flight for the first time in two seasons as long as they avoided defeat at home, by virtue of finishing higher than their rivals during the regular season.

In the past 19 seasons, only five times had the team playing the second leg of the final away won promotion to Serie A.

Worse still, in seven of the last eight times the first leg ended in a draw, the better-placed team reached calcio’s top tier.

Twelve months on from suffering heartbreak against Venezia at this stage, Cremonese faced the unappealing prospect of becoming the first team to lose the play-off final in consecutive seasons.

But Manuel De Luca’s finish midway through the first half sent them on their way and when he added his second after Michele Collocolo’s effort, they were able to hold off a Spezia fightback to triumph 3-2.

This was vindication for Stroppa, who was far too precipitously cast aside barely two months into the season.

He has now been promoted four times and has won two play-off finals in three years, getting the better of Luca D’Angelo on both occasions.

In 2022, Stroppa’s Monza and D’Angelo’s Pisa traded 10 goals, seven of them in an extraordinary second leg at the Arena Garibaldi where the dust eventually settled on a 6-4 aggregate win.

In the 2025 edition, both teams were well aware of the significance of the prize at stake, legs were heavy and brains scrambled by the fear of failure.

Through it all, a match sporadically broke out. Paulo Dentello Azzi forced a smart stop from Stefano Gori seven minutes into the game after Spezia had made the brighter start.

Twelve months ago, the Grigiorossi failed to trouble the scoreboard across 180 minutes of football against Venezia. Here they were not to be denied.

De Luca opened the scoring when he pounced on a long pass over the top and held off Petko Hristov, before squeezing the ball past Gori. He completed his brace 10 minutes from time, stabbing home from close range, after Collocolo had scored with just over an hour on the clock.

If there was nothing particularly aesthetically pleasing about the goals, it was a reminder of why only Sassuolo and Pisa have scored more than Cremonese in Serie B this season.

It was also a reminder as to why the Grigiorossi have now scored six goals in their last two visits to the Picco against a defence that conceded just 33 in the regular season, the best record in Serie B.

Three goals to the good, Cremonese looked home and hosed, their substitutes and staff joining the players in celebration in front of the away end.

But while they had lost just once since February 22, they had also kept only two clean sheets between then and the start of the play-offs. Here at last they showed the defensive resilience they had lacked during the season.

Or at least they did until Francesco Pio Esposito and Luca Vignali scored within minutes of each other to set up a grandstand finale that saw both teams reduced to 10 men, Vignali off for the hosts, soon followed by Marco Nasti.

Spezia striker Esposito had also been showing signs of frustration and his anger was palpable, the teenager struggling to shake off Cremonese defenders and a knee problem that had made him a doubt for this fixture during the week.

As his frustration grew, Spezia’s confidence began ebbing away as slowly as the smoke from the flares in the Curva Ferrovia had wafted across the pitch before kick-off.

Having finished 15th last season, the Ligurians defied the odds this term to finish third.

But as Cremonese can testify, Serie B is a hard league to escape. Losing in the play-off final is by no means a guarantee of going one better next season.

Of the nine sides – Cittadella made the final in 2019 and 2021 – that have fallen at the last stage in the past decade, only two have managed to return to Serie A, with Frosinone storming to the Serie B title in 2023 after losing the play-off final three years earlier, and Pisa going straight up this year after that disappointment in 2022.

Of the remaining seven, three have already been relegated, with Cittadella following Trapani and Carpi down to Serie C.

Stroppa’s men know the suffocating pressure all too well.

They began the campaign among the promotion favourites, but two defeats in the opening three matches and a meagre return of one goal cast doubts over their credentials.

By October, despite thrashing Sassuolo 4-1, Stroppa was gone and replaced by Eugenio Corini, only to be swiftly parachuted back barely a month later.

Stroppa said: “Of all the four promotions I have won, this is the one that infuriates me the most as I had the rug pulled from under my feet. I left the team five points from automatic promotion and I returned a month later to a team that was 12 points behind automatic promotion.”

While never as convincing as Sassuolo, Pisa and Spezia, the Grigiorossi spent just four weeks outside the top four since the beginning of December and lost just once in the final three months of the campaign.

Steadily, they began to show the kind of swagger and belief that separates the pretenders from the challengers, a dynamic they returned to for 80 minutes of this final.

And when it mattered most Cremonese buried the ghosts of seasons past, joining Sassuolo and Pisa in Serie A.

All there was left to do for Stroppa and his men was to celebrate in front of the away end, as Spezia players could barely pick themselves up from the turf.

A relieved Stroppa added: “My daughter was here tonight. I’d told her not to come as she was in Venice last season when we lost the second leg. What did I think when Spezia scored twice? I saw a gondola sailing in front of me.”