Pescara condemned to Serie B after another heavy defeat

Pescara's stay in the Italian top flight lasted a solitary season, as Roma sent Zdenek Zeman's side back to Serie B with a convincing 4-1 win Monday on the Adriatic Coast.

Goals from Kevin Strootman, Radja Nainggolan, and Mohamed Salah sealed Pescara's fate with five matches still to play. The Delfini are now 15 points behind 17th-placed Empoli, which owns the head-to-head record between the two clubs.

Relegation to the second tier was far from a surprise. Pescara endured a turbulent season that saw it win just a single Serie A match at home. Club president Daniele Sebastiani threatened to resign after hooligans torched two of his family's cars, and Massimo Oddo, the rookie manager who brought the club up to Serie A last year, was fired.

Zeman returned to Pescara, which he coached from 2011-12, and inspired an historic 5-0 victory over Genoa on Feb. 19. There was also a famous 1-1 draw against European hopeful AC Milan, but these results were nothing more than aberrations in a season of calamities.

Conceding a league-high 74 goals, Pescara gave itself little chance of survival.

The likes of Gianluca Caprari (Inter), Jean-Christophe Bahebeck (Paris Saint-Germain), and Alberto Cerri (Juventus) are likely to return to their parent clubs this summer, while 18-year-old former refugee Mamadou Coulibaly has turned heads in brief appearances with Pescara's first team.