The decline of Italian football
over the past decade has been a sad spectacle. Juventus and Milan squared off
in the Champions' League final in 2003, in what seemed to be yet another
installment of interminable Italian dominance on the continent. While Milan
returned to the final in 2005, before winning again in 2007, city rivals Inter
won the Champions’ League in 2010. But other than that there has been a relative
and general absence of Italian clubs from the latter stages of European club
competitions since that all Italian final. Ukraine and Russia have each seen a
team win the UEFA Cup, Germany has moved past Italy in the UEFA coefficient
ranking, while Spain and England have continued their stranglehold on the Champions’
League.
The departure from norm is not
simply a cyclical downturn in the fortunes of clubs from the peninsula, but the
result of a gradual decline of Italian clubs’ performances in general. Italian
clubs no longer play as effectively as they used to and as a result, win fewer
matches. Measuring quality is a notoriously subjective past-time but it’s safe
to say that Serie A matches are not as exciting as they used to be, and contain
fewer instances of skill and ability. Italian teams can no longer consistently
beat their rivals in both the Champions’ League and Europa League. Portugal, Germany,
France and even Russia have produced more winners.
Whilst attracting top talent was never
the sole preserve of Serie A, it was always able to compete favourably for the
best players, both established and emerging. And Italian clubs were often the
best finishing schools for youthful potential. With the exception of Spanish
teams, whose cultural connections to South America always gave them an
advantage, the big Italian clubs generally outbid clubs from other countries.
The likes of the two Milan clubs, Juventus, Parma, Roma, Lazio and Fiorentina
were able to lavish large wages and spend huge transfer fees on the best players
from Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, South America and most of Western Europe.
However, lately, there has been a steady trickle of players out of the league
into other leagues, notably Spain’s La Liga, and most recently, even the French
Ligue 1. This summer saw two premier talents (ace striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic
and one of the game’s best centre-backs, Thiago Silva) leave one of Italy’s
biggest Clubs, Milan for PSG. And the move was purely for financial
reasons. Silvio Berlusconi, one of the
Italy’s richest men, and his team Milan, can no longer compete at the very top.
Moreover, with Italian sides consistently
performing well in every European competition, reaching finals and usually
sprinkling the later stages of the knockout rounds with a liberal dose of Serie
A, joining an Italian team was an attractive proposition for players. The
experience, chance to win silverware and exposure made Serie A teams a popular
destination, in addition to the lucre on offer. But those are distant memories
now. Italian clubs have fallen off the pace in Europe and the local league is
no longer the spectacle it used to be. Two disastrous match fixing scandals
have tainted the league, reducing its integrity and regard. Several teams are
laden with debt and the financial health of the league is poor.
Various factors have been cited,
a reduction of competitiveness, consistently declining financial clout, a
league wide decrease in sponsorship and television revenue and a reduction in
the appeal of the league to new young talent, many of whom now look to England,
Spain, or even Germany, to further their careers. Moreover, the cyclical nature
of these phenomena cannot be understated. The more successful a team is, the
more likely it will be able to attract good players, thereby giving it a higher
chance of sustaining said success. The more money a team has, the better its chances
of recruiting top talent, the higher its probability of winning trophies and
securing more financial rewards, either through prize money, or global exposure
by way of TV deals and international fandom. And with Italian teams performing
poorly in Europe, relative to their heyday in the 90s and early 2000s, the UEFA
coefficient for the league has dropped, resulting in lower seeds and harder
draws for Italian teams. Success breeds success, failure tends to bring more of
the same.
It’s hard to say if Serie A will
regain its position as Europe’s pre-eminent league. Or even one of its best. But
the current slump in both the fortunes and quality of Serie A, is definitely a
bitter pill to swallow for declining fans and neutrals alike. Milan versus
Inter used to be one of the plum ties of the annual football calendar, the
latest edition was an undercard sideshow to El
Clasico between Real and Barcelona, played at the same time, on the same
night. And while there is the odd performance from an Italian team that
suggests Serie A’s epitaph etching may be premature, most recently Udinese’s
defeat of Liverpool at Anfield in the 2011-12 Europa League, for example, they
are far and few in between.
Serie A’s mediocrity is now the
rule, rather than the exception.
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