Opinion Serie A losing aura,players
Paolo Maldini,five times winner of the Champions League with AC Milan,said on Wednesday that the Italian Serie A would need large scale investments
Paolo Maldini,five times winner of the Champions League with AC Milan,said on Wednesday that the Italian Serie A would need large scale investments if it is to catch up with the Spanish,German and English leagues.
The former defender’s suggestion may not be the most viable FIFA’s Fair Play regulations do not any more allow for an angel investor to bail a team out of trouble with an injection of ready cash but there is little doubt that the league is struggling.
The most visible indicators of the issues with the Serie A are the Italian clubs luke-warm show in the Champions League and their inability to hold on to star players. No Italian club has made the Champions League semi-finals since Inter Milan in 2010. Their UEFA coefficient has correspondingly dropped and now just three Italian sides qualify directly for the League. Kaka,Zlatan Ibrahimovic,Thiago Silva,Javier Pastore and Wesley Sneijder have all left the league in the recent past. Serie A’s leading scorer for the current season,Edinson Cavani,is away bound too,as the big wolves circle.
Most were sold for good money,but it is possible that it wasn’t just the welcome prospect of cash for clubs in a financial bind (Serie A’s total debt for 2010-11 was 2.6 billion euroes,a 14 per cent increase from the previous year) that played a hand in the sales. Juventus president Andrea Agnelli said during the club’s share-holder meeting last year that football in Italy has suffered from a ‘complete structural collapse.’
Racism is a continuing problem. Lazio have played to empty stands and Inter have been fined twice this season for their fans’ racist behaviour. Kevin-Prince Boateng (AC Milan) walked off the pitch when abused during a friendly. The match-fixing scandal too simply refuses to go away. In 2006,champions Juventus,and other major teams including Milan were implicated in rigging games. Last August,Juventus coach Antonio Conte was banned for 10 months for not reporting fixing during his time at Siena. Then there is the problem of dipping attendance,with only half as many people watching the top tier action in Italy as compared to Germany.
Agnelli’s warning (“Football is evolving and it won’t wait for Italy. That is a fatal presumption,”) rings as true now as it did last year.
Raakesh is a senior correspondent based in Delhi
raakesh.natraj@expressindia.com
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