What happened to the Milan derbies at the San Siro? Sold out crowd, players like Andrea Pirlo and Javier Zanetti on show and an atmosphere that could make the earth shake.
For a number of years Italian football has been on a steep decline with other European football fans losing interest in watching Serie A. Growing up in England I used to watch the Serie A show every Sunday on Channel 5, as it had the sort of exposure that Revista De La Liga has now on Sky Sports. Back then the Italian giants of AC Milan, Juventus and Roma all had several world-class footballers who would put on a great show every week. For years AC Milan were the epitome of Italian football; strong, physical and hard to score against but also lethal, aggressive and unforgiving in the final third.
In the last five to eight years there has been a drastic change in the standard of football played in Italy. AC Milan lost their Champions League winning team and suffered a big drop off in both match attendance and results on the pitch. There seems to be a correlation between AC’s slump from giants to minnows and Serie A’s declining popularity across your Europe. But AC is not the only Italian club to have encountered difficulties in recent years.
After being knocked out in the group stage for the first time since the Champions League began and then going bankrupt, Juventus were forced to let go of 85% of its first team squad and then failed to qualify for two years running.
The problems on the pitch for the bigger clubs in Italy got worse when a number of scandals were brought to the surface. Several well-known and powerful individuals in the game were arrested for match fixing, and AC Milan, Inter Milan, Juventus and Roma were all involved. Serie A was about to disappear from the European elite leagues.
after that scandal, Juve’s bankruptcy and AC’s clear-out, Italian football finally found some new life. The rise of smaller clubs such as Sampdoria and Torino gave the league a new lease of life. Fans who were sick of seeing dominance and corruption found a new passion; underdog teams which had not been allowed to flourish in Calcio A due to the power of the wealthier clubs. The league has always been known for developing hard-working and gifted footballers from the grassroots of the game but over the years that production line of talent came to a halt. The scandal gave the underdogs something to fight for and they have driven the revival of Serie A.
Juventus has recently found its mojo again with some smart signings and AC Milan is set to be taken over for by some wealthy Chinese. Inter Milan has found a good batch of young talent and the smaller clubs now have a voice and a fairer split of the TV revenue.
Serie A is back and I think it will underline that fact by reclaiming the Champions League this season through Juventus.
by Nubaid Haroon YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCtMg-fWm7awR41vM1GhVOkA Twitter: twitter.com/rambofyi
The post Football: The Revival of Italy’s Serie A appeared first on Felix Magazine.
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