Former Parma striker Alessandro Melli has likened the Italian two-time UEFA Cup winners' demise to the sinking of the Titanic.
Serie A's basement club, struggling financially, were forced to call off their home game with Udinese on February 22 as they could not pay for stewards.
The Crusaders finished sixth last season to secure European qualification, but they were prevented from competing in the Europa League for not meeting UEFA's club licensing criteria because of unpaid bills.
The 45-year-old, part of Parma's 1993 European Cup Winners' Cup success and now the club's general manager, told BBC Sport: "The situation's pretty dramatic, every day there's bad news.
"In these years, and especially in the last year, I've always thought Parma was like the Titanic. There were people who believed they were travelling first class and then other people who were doing all the hard, dirty work without being paid.
"I've always thought that just like the famous tragedy and in the movie, sooner or later an iceberg would come and hit us. And the problems we had with the Uefa licensing last year, that excluded us from the Europa League, was precisely that iceberg, the beginning of the end."
Parma, Serie A runners-up in 1996-97, have just 10 points from 23 games.
Giuseppe Labellarte
