On This Day: Only season in Serie B ends in redemption

If June 17 marks a peak in Roma history - that sweet Scudetto victory of 2001 - then June 22 perhaps at the very least marks a renaissance.

It was on this day in 1952, after all, that the Giallorossi secured their promotion back to Serie A, having been condemned to the second division on another June 17, albeit a much more controversial one, a year prior.

Indeed, prior to 2001 the date of June 17 was considered cursed by many Giallorossi fans, a black mark on the club's history for what had happened 50 years earlier.

Never mind. On 22 June 1952, the Giallorossi went to Verona to face Hellas at the Stadio Comunale knowing a point would be enough for them to return to the top flight, confirming in top spot in their division.

Pushed close, that season can perhaps be considered the fourth title - beyond those top flight ones of 1942, 1983 and 2001 - that the club has won, after a hard-fought battle over 38 games.

In the end the side finished with 52 points (back then you received just two points for a win), outlasting Brescia - the only side Roma didn't beat at least once that campaign - by a solitary point.

A total of 22 wins, nine draws and seven defeats marked out a successful campaign from the side. In the end that final game against Hellas ended 0-0, pragmatism surpassing passion in the end.

Only at the final whistle did the side break into celebrations.

In that moment Roma were back in Serie A - and they haven't been out since.

Since that day, only Inter can match that unbroken record, being of course the only side never to have spent a season outside the top flight in any capacity. Everyone knows why Juventus can't boast a similar record, or why AC Milan were never in the running to.

Roma's streak, considering all that, cannot be dismissed out of hand - it is at the very least an achievement in consistency.

Bouncing straight back up to the top flight isn't an easy task these days, and it wasn't back in those either. Over 8,000 Roma fans turned up to celebrate with the team in Verona - a sign of the way the run to glory had fired up the tifosi, despite the lower category.

For Vincenzo Biancone, the club's sporting director in that period, it was "an indescribable satisfaction. Even better than when we won the national title 10 years ago".

Club president Renato Sacerdoti joined the players as they lifted the league trophy. The club captain, Arcadio Venturi, would later remember that afternoon like this:

"In Verona we put Roma back where it belonged. On the pitch it wasn't a classic game, finishing goalless. After the 90 minutes I remember finally feeling this overwhelming sensation of freedom.

"Getting promoted back to Serie A was the absolute minimum we could do after falling the way we had done the season before. On the way back we certainly celebrated!"

Venturi did not easily forget the relegation that had proceeded all that, though.

"It was a tragedy," he said.

"A blow that was hard to get over. Everyone seemed to criticise us, it was a scandal."

The scars from that took a long time to heal, but at least June 17 saw an important step made. Monday's Corriere dello Sport ran with the headline, 'Roma return to the elite'.

"The purgatory is over," journalist Giuseppe Sabelli Fioretti wrote.

The purgatory of Serie B, for one season and no more.