The money available to Milan had started to create a divide between teams within the league — those who could afford to attract the big names and achieve success quickly, and those who could not achieve the same success in a similar time-frame. The haves and the have-nots. It was obvious where your superstar footballer would choose to go to.
In many instances, teams who failed to attract the big names suffered badly. An example of this is the transfer of the world football legend, Roberto Baggio, from Fiorentina to the mega-rich Juventus in 1990, for a world record fee. In fact the transfer angered Fiorentina fans so much that a riot ensued within Florence, creating the beginning of a bitter rivalry between Fiorentina and Juventus that lasts to this day.
The ability for Milan to have assembled, by general consensus, some the strongest teams ever to grace football led to complete domination of the Italian Serie A, and back-to-back success in Europe. Consequently, Milan remains the only team to have won the Champions League two times in a row. Domestically however, Italian football, thanks to Milan, had started to become predictable by 1992, its twilight period, and ironically the moment when worldwide audiences had started to take notice of Italian football.
The 1991/92 Serie A season saw Milan not lose one single game whatsoever, having played 34 games, winning 22, and drawing 12. Milan would go on to win Serie A championship in 1992/93, and 1993/94, before a brief blip, and then winning the league again in 1995/96. It was becoming evident that the open and exciting league that graced the late 80s was rapidly fading. Superstar players did not want to join a wealthy team with no prestige or history, such as the case with Sampdoria.
Players who were emboldened with more power had more say in dictating the spread of quality talent. Furthermore, for teams to keep up with Milan, they had to spend more to strengthen their squads. But one part of the equation must always lose out.
This is notable by the transfer of Gianluca Vialli, a hero for Sampdoria, who helped them win their only title. But he was then transferred to Juventus for £12m, a world record in 1992.
By 1996, the glamour of the Italian championship had been restricted to four or five teams — in particular — the teams with the money behind them. This included Milan, Inter, Juventus, Roma, and Lazio. After this elite group, you had the teams which always caused problems for the big guns such as Udinese, and Parma.
The money continued to be splashed however. World famous Brazilian star, Ronaldo, was sold by Barcelona to Inter Milan for a world record £19.5m in 1997. Another transfer set the world record again, when Christian Vieri was sold by Lazio to Inter Milan for £32m in 1999.
However, Inter Milan certainly bucked the trend, because despite all their spending on huge wages and large transfer fees, they failed to win the Italian championship during this period. Lazio definitely made the most of the deal, as they went on to win only their second Italian championship in 2000. Powered by money, however, Juventus would go on to attract players such as Zinedine Zidane, Pavel Nedved, Edgar Davids, Gianluigi Buffon, and win the Italian championship in 2001-02, and 2002-03. Notice the pattern here?
The boom in the wealth of the English Premier League, especially after Manchester United’s treble win in 1999, coincided with a steady decline of interest in Italian football, where only clubs powered by money dominated the league, bought the best players, and in general stifled the concept of the underdog. You were certain of the outcome if Milan, Inter, or Juventus were involved. The lack of excitement, unpredictability and underdog wins which had started in 1992, and was in full motion by 2001, has been a sore mark on Italian football to this present day.
The darkest taint on Italian football, which I believe, is why the league struggles to attract audiences today, was in 2006, where a number of teams were involved in a betting scandal, whereby referees and officials were bribed, and where some teams tried to appoint certain referees for specific matches. The teams involved were the ambassadors of Italian football; the teams in which Italian football had come to be associated with by the rest of the world. This made the betting scandal all the more embarrassing for those associated with Italian football.
Milan, Fiorentina, Juventus, Lazio and Reggina were all implicated in the scandal and punished accordingly. Juventus, a team with incredible prestige, were relegated to Serie B and as a result lost a key number of star players: Adrian Mutu, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Lilian Thuram and Gianluca Zambrotta. Milan were handed a 30 point penalty and Lazio were booted out of the UEFA Cup of the 2006/07 season. The complete devastation of the Italian football league led to the most dominant periods not seen since Torino of the 1950s, with Inter Milan taking full advantage of the depletion of their rivals, and winning the Italian championship FIVE times in a row, from 2005 to 2010.
This run came to an end and brings us to the present day when their bitter rivals, Milan, won their first championship in 2011. Milan last won it in 2004. This was not without a boost from the money pot, with Milan signing Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Robinho, Antonio Cassano, Kevin-Prince Boateng, and Urby Emanuelson.
Unsurprisingly, the monotony of Serie A has led to a stagnant level of fan attendances. New forms of media transmission – the Internet, HDTV, mobile streaming — has made the average Serie A stadium a place only the most loyal fans would go to. The low rate of income tax, the sun, sea and nightlife has made your pimped-up football megastar more likely to choose Spanish football as a place to lap up the fame. The £80m transfer fee which took Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United to Real Madrid on a reported £400,000 per week salary is an example of this. Likewise, the pure passion of English football has also resulted in the same outcome. Spain and England are number one.
All of this means that Italy’s Serie A has now fallen far behind. The recent UEFA league ranking has shown that Germany has now overtaken Italy into third place. This in turn affects the number of Champions League places available to Italian teams, which are now down from four to three.
The sparse distribution of money and wealth in Italian football has meant that ‘splashing the cash’ is something that the top clubs in Italy now think twice about. The over-reliance on big-names and their past glories now means that it is not uncommon to find teams in Italy with many players over the age of 30, sometimes 35. Young players as a result are un-tamed because they rarely get the chance to test themselves within Serie A.
Despite the bleak nature of what I have written above, passionate lovers of Italian football such as myself should not despair. This current 2011/12 season has been one of the most open seasons seen in Serie A for a long time. Not only do we have the likes of Udinese and Lazio equalling the bigger and wealthier teams on the pitch, more is now being done to revamp the standard of the league.
Juventus, with their wealthy backers have built their first ever privately owned stadium, which has sold out for every match played there this season — a very unusual trend for an attendance shy Serie A. Likewise, lowly Cagliari has introduced plans rebuild their stadium, the Stadio Sant’Elia, and so have Udinese and Napoli — the emphasis very much on bringing fans back to the stadium. However, this cannot be done without money.
Young talented players such as Ghana-born Mario Balotelli have seen the stagnation of Serie A and gone abroad (however Mario Balotelli’s relationship with Italy and football is more complex, I must admit). However the same situation has occurred with Giuseppe Rossi, who has lit up the Spanish Liga with his silky skills at Villarreal.
Others who have remained such as the 25-year-old Sebastian Giovinco, have seen their immense potential stunted by a lack of opportunities at the top, having been ousted by Juventus and now plying his trade at Parma.
If Italy wants to take Serie A back to the top of world football, it would be wise to make its young players the centre of attention. Racism, which has been making steady progress in being quashed in Italian football, needs to continue in this path.
The signs are good, with Angelo Ogbonna, the Nigerian-born defender, representing the Italian national team for the first time recently. The same goes for Ghana-born Mario Balotelli, who recently scored his first goal for Italy in a match against Poland.
The glory days of Italian football are long gone. But with the right attitude towards young players, stadium infrastructures and its global image, Serie A will rise again. Money may not be the ultimate answer, however.