I never thought I'd be able to write this post.
Since 2006 and the game-changing effects of the Calciopoli trial that sent Italy's most successful club into footballing purgatory for a year, the collateral damage for the rest of Italy was equally debilitating.
Serie A turned into a one-horse race for four years as AC Milan struggled to inject its ageing side with youth while Juventus began a long journey back to prominence that was filled with poor signings and consecutive 7th place finishes. Calcio lost stars almost annually from 2009 - from Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Kaka' to latterly Alexis Sanchez and Thiago Silva. All this while Premier League clubs were monopolising the transfer market and the latter stages of the Champions League - whispers around the rest of Europe were that Serie A was closer to the selling clubs from the Eredivise than the dominating clubs from England and Spain.
Ligue 1 and PSG began to strip Serie A for parts, taking Jeremy Menez, Equeziel Lavezzi, Marco Verratti, Javier Pastore and the aforementioned Thiago Silva and Zlatan Ibrahimovic(again) while Italian clubs looked to balance their finances - no longer able to fund the superstars that were so often associated with the once glamorous and envied Serie A.
But this summer, the tides have begun to turn back.
Instead of the book-balancing sales that have been forced on Italian clubs in recent years (Silvio Berlusconi famously saying rejecting a €42m bid for Thiago Silva would have been "irresponsible" in 2012) teams have been clever when the money waving clubs from England and France came knocking.
They have sold sparingly, sold big and immediately reinvested. No other club epitomizes this business strategy better than Napoli this summer; who after years of being asked about Edinson Cavani from Manchester City to Real Madrid to Juventus, it was PSG who finally came in and forced De Laurentiis to part with his star forward, but not before meeting the €64m buy-out clause his President had set for the Uruguayan that took Manchester City and Juventus out of the race to sign him.
De Laurentiis then used the money to immediately reinvest in his side - bringing in Gonzalo Higuain right from under Arsenal's nose, PSV's promising winger Dries Mertens and Madrid duo Raul Albiol and Jose Callejon. and it might not end there. Napoli lost their star player and got better as a team.
Fiorentina did the same when striker Stevan Jovetic left for Manchester City for the €30m price tag that they were resolutely standing by despite continuous advances from Juventus that included a motley crue of player plus cash deals but Andrea Della Valle and his board members stuck to their price and have continued to build this summer - adding Bayern Munich striker Mario Gomez to a team brimming with talent and promise. Gomez is set to partner the returning Giuseppe Rossi up front in what could be one of the best front-pairings in the league.
Juventus have proven once again that good players are available at good prices, adding Carlos Tevez and Fernando Llorente to a team with an frightening depth of ability already. Roma sold promising young defender Marquinhos for an astonishing €35m bid to PSG and added Kevin Strootman, Mehdi Benatia and former Inter hero Maicon and still registered a profit of around €4m or so.
While the Premier League's big clubs have scrabbled around for talent and squandered most of the time they have making unsuccessful bids for players, Italian sides have done their business quietly, quickly and relatively cheaply.
Manchester United have been ambling from club to club looking for that young, talented midfielder while Roma got Kevin Strootman for €17m, around €18m less than the bid that Barcelona rejected for Cesc Fabregas.
Arsenal need a striker, and after Napoli took advantage of their caution to sign Higuain they bid £40m on Luis Suarez, who is now set to sign an extension at Anfield. Weeks earlier, Fiorentina secured a €16.5m deal for 27-year old, Champions League winning striker Mario Gomez, who is now at a club that don't play in the Champions League who spent around half of what Manchester City gave them for Jovetic and nearly a third of what Arsenal were prepared to spend on Suarez. Makes you think, doesn't it?
No league has got better on the whole as much as Serie A, who have arguably turned the title race into a five-horse race (Juve, Milan, Napoli, Fiorentina, Roma) and added a much larger collection of talent to Italy than the one that has left it behind.
Additionally, the recent years of austerity has meant that Serie A has become a breeding ground for Italian youth - more and more top clubs in Italy are giving starts and prominent roles to younger players, a trend that is a silver lining to the cloud that has often hung over the Italian game. From Napoli's Lorezo Insigne, Milan's Balotelli-El Shaarawy-De Sciglio youth triumvate to Alessandro Florenzi at Roma, Serie A has gotten much younger across the board and has finally thrown the ageing stereotype off its back.
After years of clinging on to the famous faces of yesterday, Serie A has hit the reset button over the last 24 months or so and is finally making some headway. There is a long way to go yet before attendance figures and Champions League places return to their pre-Calciopoli heyday but things are closer than they've been for nearly a decade.
Welcome back, Serie A. We missed you.
No comments:
Post a Comment