Il campionato piu bello del mondo

In Italy Serie A is referred to as ‘il campionato piu bello del mondo’, this translates as “the most beautiful championship in the world”. I lived and worked for a while and went to a few Inter games, this was the league to watch in the mid 90’s. The atmosphere was electric and the product on the pitch was a beautiful, possession orientated game with the best players in the world.

The league does not seem healthy right now. There have been chairmen and owners convicted of influencing referees, the Italian game is full of rumours claiming bribery, influenced games and clubs using politicians to get their way.

The biggest scandal resulted in Juventus having two championships stripped and dropped to Serie B. Point deductions, fines and competition bans were levelled against Fiorentina, A.C. Milan, Lazio and Reggina.

During the 06 closed season big names players moved from the affected clubs. Patrick Viera and Zlatan Ibrahimovic went to Inter, the newly crowed champions and the club that gained most from the scandal. Many other players, including Zambrotta, Cannavaro, Stam and Rui Costa left Serie A for other European leagues.

The trend continues, the leagues biggest name, Kaka signed for Real Madrid, A.C.’s manager Carlo Ancelotti moved to Chelsea and rumours abound of players following him to the Premier League.

Unquestionably Serie A was the league in which all the top players in world football wanted to play. It started with Michel Platini at Juventus, Trevor Frances at Sampdoria and Maradona leading Napoli to two titles. Lothar Matthaeus was the man who led Inter to the championship. Most memorable of all were A.C Milans trio of Frank Rijkaard, Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten that gave the storied club perhaps their most successful era ever.

After the World Cup in 1990 the success kept coming for Serie A with a new group of names making it the strongest (and wealthiest) league in the world. Ronaldo, Shevchenko, Batistuta, Crespo, Thuram and Zinedine Zidane could have played at any league in the world, and they all chose to play in Italy.

So what happened?

It seems to come down to finances. The TV contract and revenue generated by the Premier League and the privileged few in La Liga clearly allowed these clubs to compete with, and then overtake Italy financially.

To make matters worse Italian clubs generally don’t own their grounds and the last major expansion was for Italia 90. Currently the Spanish and English grounds are far ahead in both facilities and more importantly today, revenue generation. While Juve are getting a new stadium built with mostly public money, other clubs have found getting local authories to pay for upgrades in the current climate is all but impossible.

The big 5 or 6 European clubs have created incredible brands that move huge amounts of merchandise and add significantly to the bottom line, and none of those are Italian.

Additionally Italian captain Fabio Cannavaro has called for a rethinking of the Italian youth system, he proposes the clubs adopt something closer to the academies in England. The top youth players in Italy are finding homes abroad where the technical training is just as good and the facilities are far better.

The early exit from the Confederations Cup in South Africa may be exactly what the World champions needed to take a look at the fundamentals of the Italian game and look at what Serie A needs to do to allow them to compete with the big British and Spanish clubs.

A Champions League that has German and Italian sides consistently competing where it matters, along with the English and Spanish clubs can only be good for the game in Europe.