Rangers and Parma got to know each other rather well in the nineties.

In 1999 Rangers bested a Parma side containing Gianluigi Buffon, Lilian Thuram, Fabio Cannavaro and Hernan Crespo 2-1 on aggregate in the Champions League qualifiers. Dick Advocaat's side had also ran into the Gialloblu in the third round of the UEFA Cup the season prior, falling to a 4-2 aggregate defeat.

15 and a bit years later they have been reunited, not in continental competition, but in that select group of clubs with glorious histories that somehow find themselves at risk of complete oblivion.

Parma's game against Udinese, scheduled to kick off at 3pm local time yesterday afternoon at the Stadio Tardini, did not take place, as the club could not afford to pay for stewards. No wages have been paid since July last year, the electricity has been cut, vehicles have been seized by tax authorities, a director has been hospitalised with heart issues and depression and there have been three different owners at the helm this season alone.

Parma fans, like their counterparts on the south side of Glasgow, have become accustomed to a daily diet of depressing news and a saga with an even more elaborate plot than Wolf Hall, replete with a similarly huge cast of morally ambiguous characters.

The obvious question is: How? How could any club as capable, colourful and downright cool as Parma were in the nineties find themselves in such a parlous state?

Scott Brown spoke before Celtic's clash with Inter last week of his fondness for Gazzetta Football Italia, and Parma were one of the reasons him and so many others tuned in to the cult Channel 4 show - a small club from Emilia-Romagna with an adventurous style of play, a penchant for launching the careers of stars such as Buffon, Thuram, Cannavaro and Crespo, and perhaps most alluringly, a very snazzy yellow and blue striped strip.

It was the era of the 'Seven Sisters', seven different sides all in with a shout of winning the Serie A title, and Parma were one of them, coming within two points of lifting the Scudetto in 1997 and sweeping up three Coppa Italias, two UEFA Cups, one Cup Winners' Cup and the Italian and European super cups all within a golden ten-year spell.

The noughties saw them brought back to earth with a bang with the collapse of parent company Parmalat, a spell in administration and a year in Serie B, but more recently the Crociati, or 'Crusaders', have re-established themselves in the Italian top flight, less ambitious and glamorous than before, but a solid mid-table outfit nonetheless.

Led by former Italian national side boss Roberto Donadoni, they pipped Torino to 7th place and Europa League qualification last season, but were denied entry to the competition due to an unpaid tax bill. And that was when things began to go horribly wrong.

President Tommaso Ghirardi declared his intention to sell up and promptly flogged influential midfielder Marco Parolo.

No factors strictly related to football could fully explain quite how bad the Gialloblu were in the first few months of the season however.

It was only in December, when Ghirardi finally offloaded Parma to Albanian Rezart Taci and the pay issue was revealed, leading to a one-point penalty being imposed, that the pitiful performances began to make sense.

Taci was in charge for less than two months before doing as Ghirardi did and selling the club for €1, but it was certainly an eventful period, January seeing star player Antonio Cassano terminate his contract in protest and numerous others leave for nominal fees.

Matters came to a head this week with a series of crisis meetings involving the city's mayor, players' union chief Damiano Tommasi and Taci's successor Giampietro Manenti, who has repeatedly promised to pay the players' wages but failed to deliver.

"The idea of administration is long gone," said club captain Alessandro Lucarelli, speaking eloquently and despairingly about Parma's plight in yesterday's Gazzetta dello Sport.

"We want to bring forward the bankruptcy hearing that is already planned for March 19. I have never seen a horrible story like this in football. Why was Parma allowed to register almost 200 players? Why was the club allowed to be sold on twice for €1?"

With hindsight, Parma's business model was fundamentally flawed. Having a network of players that you loan out or sell in co-ownership deals - some that are eventually brought back into the fold, some that are sold permanently - is par for the course in Italy, but they took the process to absurd new heights.

For now, the club's best hope appears to be a deal whereby the Italian federation and the governing body of Serie A will provide a €5m loan to allow them to see out the current campaign and begin again with new owners in Serie B.

The alternative is liquidation and starting again from the very bottom of the pile. Either way, Lucarelli isn't planning on bailing out any time soon.

"I am prepared to stay with Parma even in the amateur league and continue wearing this armband. Parma is within me now."