Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season
ilfenomeno said:
I have a question, in the 90's Italian league was THE football league per se, I remember watching many hours of VHS footage of Parma with Crespo, Juventus with Zidane, Fiorentina with Batigol and many more but then something happened, and now Italian league is ranked 3rd and might even be surpassed by the German Bundesliga. When did the Downfall happen? Is it all because of the bet scandal?
bet scandal? there was no bet scandal in serie a... i guess u mean "calciopoli", the so called "moggi scandal". that, i'm afraid to say, was something worse than a simple bet scandal..... it was about a general manager (moggi, juve's former General manager) , trying to help his team winning matches through his power and influence (some sort of a corruption... but without any money involved)..... the saddest part, in retrospect, is that juve really didn't need any help at all. i mean that juve was a terrific world class team.... and honestly i can't help thinking they would have won even without moggi's dirty tricks..... afterall that juve did great also in champions league..... and moggi only had influence on italy and serie a (he never used any "trick" to help juve in champions league...... simply because he couldn't).... so seeing how that juve team delivered in europe (without moggi's help) makes me realise they would have done a damn good job in serie a aswell, without that cheating bastard.
anyway mate, as u probably already realised, by reading the posts above this one, people doesn't really feel the change serie a went through as a "downfall".
i mean there was certainly a "blow" in serie a, but that shouldn't necessarily be seen as a bad thing. first of all let's analyse the situation....
in the mid 90s there were 7 scudetto contenders in serie a. the so called "7 sisters": milan, juve, inter, roma, lazio, fiorentina and parma. 7 world class teams, filled with top class players; and right behind them there were 2 "almost top class teams (napoli and sampdoria).
so it's a total of 9 great teams. in a league formed by 18 clubs that means half of the league was formed by top tier football clubs. sounds great indeed.
today the situation is quite different. milan and inter can certainly be described as top class teams, but the remaining "5 sisters" can't. so what's happened?
we all know juventus was dismantled by the moggi scandal. the team was torn apart, most of their stars gone, the club dumped in serie b. nowadays juve is in the middle of a very long, very complicated rebuilding process, and it's gonna take a few more years to have a world class juve back again.
so that explains juventus downfall.... but what about the other teams??
well it all began with berlusconi. in the late 80's berlusconi bought milan and in a few years he turned milan into the greatest club in the world. berlusconi had the same impact on football sacchi had on coaching. sacchi changed the approach to the game as it was played on the pitch. berlusconi changed the approach to club management.
berlusconi did exactly what abramovich did in premier league. he simply blew out, destroyed, dismantled the economy of a league, by overpaying each and every player he bought. u see a "market" is like an ecosystem... every change has an impact on the whole system. berlusconi's crazy offers and contracts created an inflation process wich soon became impossible to stop.
very soon the other club owners realised serie a was changed. they couldn't keep up with berlusconi's crazy expenses..... they were rich, but they weren't rich enough to waste millions without even bothering. and they realised it was time for them to walk away. so they walked away. a few years after berlusconi's landing on serie a, there was a revolution.... a huge lot of clubs changed ownership.
Ernesto Pellegrini sold
inter to Massimo Moratti
Giuseppe Ciarrapico sold
roma to Franco Sensi
Calleri sold
lazio to Sergio Cragnotti
Pedraneschi sold
parma to Tanzi
Righetti sold
fiorentina to Cecchi Gori
5 of the 7 sisters changed ownership. theese new owners are very different from each others. some of them are very nice, spontaneuous people (Sensi).... some are true gentlemen (Moratti)..... some are just unclassy rich people (Cecchi Gori)... and some others are just sleazy, flamboyant, shameless businessmen "a la Gordon Gecko" (Tanzi and Cragnotti).....
but they all had one thing in common; they were all dreamers... passionate dreamers, who wanted their clubs to reach the top.
like i said before, their predecessors couldn't keep up with berlusconi's contracts and offers.... look at it as a if we were talking about a poker game. berlusconi joined the game, and started raising so much that everyone else had to fold.
the thing is theese new owners couldn't keep up with berlusconi either........ but they didn't care. they kept spending as much money as berlusconi, even though their clubs weren't making as many profits as milan.....they kept paying crazy wages and making crazy offers for years, recurring to loans and bonds...... but sooner or later loans and bond expire..... and u'll have to face the consequences of all those years of reckless spending.
theese new owners brought their clubs on the brink of disaster with their exagerate love and passion for their clubs and their reckless spending.
some clubs had to face bankrupt (fiorentina and napoli). those clubs had to start over from scratch. they were dumped in serie c and their new owners (Della Valle in fiorentina and De Laurentis in napoli) had to start over, rebuilding the team and winning their way to serie a back again.
some other clubs were saved by a last minute change of ownership.
lotito saved lazio, buying the club (with its debts) from cragnotti. and he's done a great job for lazio ever since then, with his new smart, pennywise strategies.
ghirardi bought parma saving the club from disaster.
roma instead didn't change ownership, but was saved Sensi himself. he realised what a dangerous path he took before it was too late and so he stopped spending crazy money and worked really hard to erase roma's debts. Franco Sensi's daughter, will eventually finish the great job her father began and eventually save roma from bankrupt.
so that's it. that's the reason of the "downfall" of those clubs. those clubs today are an example of brilliant club management. they erased their debts (actually lazio is still paying its debts, but lotito agreed on a brilliant payment plan).
of course today they don't apply those very same policies that almost destroyed them. the never spend more than their profits. that obviously means that they can't afford to sign fancy stars with high wages like say, ibra or drogba or cristiano ronaldo or messi. they have to work on their academies to produce their own talents (de silvestri, de rossi, palombo, chiellini are good examples). or they have to buy young talents early in their carreers, when they're still (relatively) cheap and don't ask for crazy wages (like montolivo, frey, pazzini, menez, vucinic).
but does that mean the league has faced a downfall? i don't think so.
u see, a league is formed by 18\20 clubs. back in the 90's we had 9 great teams, but the rest of the league was formed by poor clubs who used to display the most boring, flat and defensive football (wich is pretty much what happens in premier league today).
today instead every club in serie a has his own "footballling personality" all of them, even the poorest clubs, always try (and succeed) to play football "ball on the ground".
no catenaccio, no long balls.... quality football.
not only we have a huge lot of midclass teams who play some of the most entertaining football in europe (as a matter of fact, teams like fiorentina, napoli, genoa, palermo, sampdoria are much more fun to watch than most of the top clubs.... they're actualyl more entertaining than many foreign top clubs too)......
... but also the poorest clubs, those who fight to avoid relegation, they play some real good football. i mean if u watch brescia, cagliari, catania, bari or chievo... and then compare em to their spanish, german and english counterparts..... the difference is huge. our poor clubs look like midclass clubs compared to other leagues pooor clubs.
so the overall quality of the league hasn't decreased at all. if anything it's improved!
and there's also another factor to consider. let's consider roma for instance. do u remember capello's roma? that was a world class team! an amazing team, filled with world class stars in every role... cafu, emerson, samuel, montella, batistuta... were all in their prime when they used to play in roma.
now let's think of spalletti's roma. it was a completely different team. during spalletti's era, roma was already applying those pennywise strategies i mentioned..... it was a very poor club (from a financial point of view) and also the squad didn't have as many stars as capello's roma.
still, spalletti's roma was so much more fun to watch than capello's roma. spalletti's roma was definitely "poorer" than capello's roma on paper.... but on the pitch spalletti's roma was even better than capello's great roma team.
and even when u consider the current ranieri roma.... roma today is quite poor from a financial point of view. they have a hard time trying to hold their great players, nevermind signing great stars.... they're nowhere near as rich and powerful as inter....... and yet, this "small time" roma managed to fight for the scudetto till the very last match of the season last year. and it's not like inter is a poor contender... we're talking about the current champions league winners.... a team which trashed chelsea in champions league and beated 3-1 barcelona in milano...... and yet roma was unbelievably close to beat inter and win serie a last season.
so, being poor doesn't necessarily mean u can deliver and play some great football.
all in all, i wouldn't say serie a is the 4th league in europe today..... because it's impossible to rank the leagues today, as each of em (liga, premiership, serie a and bundi) is great.... for different reasons.
if we would consider
the whole atmosphere of the matches, then premiership and bundesliga are the best......
if we consider
the technical quality of the individual players, then la liga is the best, serie a is the second, and then there are bundi and premiership.
if we consider
the overall quality of the football played by all teams, then serie a is by far the best league, then there are la liga, premiership and bundi......
and if we consider
the competitiveness of the league, then bundesliga and ligue 1 are ahead of any other european league.
)
Hope that comes with gold-plated rolls royce 
Never say never. Besides, Barca have debt problems up the ass, so anything can happen. Messi might even request a transfer 
Stranger things have happened, that's for sure.