From 1984, when Napoli completed the signing of Diego Maradona for a world-record fee, until the turn of the millennium, Serie A legitimately claim to be the finest football league on Earth.
Ballon d’Or winners Michel Platini, Ruud Gullit, Marco van Basten, Lothar Matthaus and Roberto Baggio all plied their trade in Serie A in these years, while Italian sides claimed 14 of the 33 European trophies on offer between 1989 and 1999 – comfortably more than any other country.
In the last decade, however, Italy has only had two representatives in the Champions League final and none in the UEFA Europa League.
The league no longer attracts the world’s best talent – none of 888sport’s ’10 best players in the world’ play on the peninsula – who instead prefer to go to Spain, England and Germany. Why is this and can Italy ever reclaim its position at the top of the continental game?
The decline of Italian football
The primary reason that Serie A has fallen behind La Liga, the Premier League and even the Bundesliga in recent years is money.
Between 1984 and 2000, the world record transfer fee was broken 12 times, nine of which were made by Italian clubs. Since Hernan Crespo’s £35.5m move in 2000 from Parma to Lazio, however, the biggest deals have been the sole preserve of Spanish and English clubs.
While Real Madrid, Barcelona and Manchester United have monopolised the upper echelons of the Deloitte Money League, Italian clubs have floundered, with only Juventus really able to match the superclubs’ financial might.
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Mass exodus
Perhaps the best example of the Serie A’s decline came in the summer of 2016, when Paul Pogba moved back to Manchester United from Juventus for £89m.
Despite Juve claiming five scudetti in a row and reaching the Champions League final in 2015, the French midfielder chose to join up with his former club, who had just finished fifth in the Premier League and failed to qualify for UEFA’s top competition.
Pogba isn’t the only world-class talent who has left Serie A in recent years. AC Milan’s Kaka –the best player in the world in 2007 – was poached by Real Madrid in 2009, while Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Thiago Silva, Arturo Vidal and Edinson Cavani also moved abroad in search of greater riches.
What does the future hold?
Juve’s dominance has been part of the problem. In summer, the Turin club snapped up Gonzalo Higuain – 2015/16’s capocannoniere and closest rival Napoli’s best player. Roma’s Miralem Pjanic also joined the champions, making Juve essentially odds-on to claim another title before a ball was even kicked.
There is optimism in Italy though. AC Milan have a lot of talented, young players coming through the ranks, while Inter Milan have awoken from a half-decade of slumber and splashed the cash in recent months.
The Milan clubs are challenging the Turin hegemony in different ways, but if either – or both – succeed, we could see a stronger Serie A in years to come.
