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Serie A heads hanging Clubs must change to improve performance in Europe
They spend more than anyone on transfers, they pay higher wages than anyone -- and they will have one more team in the quarterfinals of European competitions than San Marino or the Vatican. Serie A has once again failed miserably on the big stage, just as it did last season, when Lazio was the only Italian side to make the quarterfinals in Europe, where it was promptly thumped by Valencia. This year, at best, Italy will have one representative in the quarterfinals -- AC Milan, assuming it manages to squeak through. Serie A clubs should hang their collective heads in shame. Nobody expects the kind of dominance Serie A displayed between 1989 and 1999. In that 11-year period, Italian clubs won an incredible 15 of 33 trophies, supplying 25 of the 66 finalists. But a semi-decent showing, something other than a pathetic waving of the white flag, was the least one might have asked. Instead, Serie A clubs drowned in a mixture of arrogance, mismanagement and sheer stupidity.
How did this happen? Some point to a fundamental shift in the balance of power, suggesting that Spain's Liga and England's Premiership are now the continent's pre-eminent domestic competitions. Perhaps this is so, but this theory does not explain what went wrong. Serie A still has more strength in depth and, simply put, better playerstop-to-bottom, than its counterparts in Spain, England and elsewhere. What do Patrick Mboma, Vincenzo Montella, David Trezeguet, Vladimir Jugovic, Hakan Sukur, Marcelo Salas, Darko Kovacevic, Antonio Conte, Leonardo, Clarence Seedorf and Hidetoshi Nakata have in common? They are world-class superstars who would start for all but a handful of teams outside Italy and yet are not starters for their Serie A sides. Heck, even Alvaro Recoba would probably take a back seat to a fit Christian Vieri-Ronaldo partnership at Inter Milan and Recoba is only the world's highest-paid player. If there's a problem with Serie A (and there certainly is), it is most definitely not lack of talent. When it comes to attracting talent, any one of Italy's top six clubs (Roma, Lazio, AC Milan, Inter, Juventus and Parma) can outgun anybody in the world, with the possible exception of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United and Bayern Munich. They simply have more to spend on wages and more to spend on transfer fees, plus the benefit of chairmen who don't seem to care about red ink. Nor is it a case of Serie A managers being inexperienced or incompetent. Of the seven men who managed Italy's "Seven Sisters" (the six aforementioned clubs plus Fiorentina) at the start of the season, six had won ether a European trophy or a domestic title. The other excuses produced are equally laughable. Milan vice-chairman Adriano Galliani suggested that Italy did not have enough "political clout" within UEFA, because there are currently no Italians on the body's executive board. This is deeply troubling, because one might draw the implication that if Italy had more "clout" at the UEFA level, Italian clubs would have an easier time with referees, a suggestion which is patently offensive. If we start thinking that referees are somehow biased or prone to influence, then we might as well all pack up and go home, because the game will be one step away from becoming as scripted as professional wrestling. Besides, Galliani's theory is refuted by empirical evidence: England and Holland have no representation at UEFA executive level and their clubs don't seem to suffer. Finally, there's the pathetic school of thought that contends that Serie A is too stressful and clubs simply cannot compete in Europe as well as domestically. First of all, if that were the case, it would only apply to Roma, Juventus and Lazio, since Italy's other clubs are already out of the Serie A race and therefore should have no trouble concentrating on European competitions. More importantly, this lame whinge of an excuse doesn't consider the fact that Serie A clubs have huge squads of 20, 25 players which were assembled precisely with a view towards being competitive in Europe as well as domestically. Take Juventus: even if Pippo Inzaghi and Alex Del Piero are unavailable, it can call on Kovacevic and Trezeguet, US$50 million worth of striking talent. Or Roma. No Franceso Totti? Bring on Nakata. No Gabriel Batistuta? Hello, Montella. The real problem is deeper and goes all the way to boardroom level. For too long, Italian clubs have been stockpiling offensive talent with little regard for logic. Lazio for example has the likes of Salas, Hernan Crespo, Claudio Lopez, Fabrizio Ravanelli, Pavel Nedved, Juan Sebastian Veron, Simone Inzaghi and Dejan Stankovic. It looks pretty sexy in the summer, but the reality is that they obviously can't all play at the same time, so Lazio balances it out with good old-fashioned hard men, like Dino Baggio and Roberto Baronio. Furthermore, because Italian clubs still think "safety-first", the skill players generally play at half-throttle, to ensure that they don't neglect their defensive duties (a cardinal sin in Serie A). The result is that many skillful players end up either on the bench or, if they're lucky enough to play, find themselves saddled with complicated defensive and/or tactical responsibilities. Veron is an excellent example. With Argentina, he moves around and comes forward whenever he likes, guided only by his footballing instincts and inspiration. With Lazio, he holds his position, tracks back constantly and looks about as relaxed as an obstetrician giving birth to sextuplets. Italian clubs have an obsession with turning every talented midfielder into an all-rounder in the Frank Rijkaard or Edgar Davids mold and every talented striker into a Marco Delveccho, a guy who runs himself into the ground harassing opposing fullbacks for 90 minutes. That's fine in theory, but you can't turn a Veron into a Roy Keane or a Romario into a Patrick Kluivert. Or rather, if you do, you're not exploiting the player's full offensive potential, you end up with a hybrid. It's like asking Eric Clapton to play the drums. He could probably do it fairly well, but, given what it would cost you to hire him, you'd be better served with employing a natural run-of-the-mill drummer and letting him do his thing on the lead guitar. As a result, Italian teams often produce less than the sum of their parts, which is the exact opposite of what is supposed to happen. How do you fix this situation? There are two ways. You either change the players (ditching a couple of offensive superstars for a few gritty, unglamorous scrubs might be a start) or you change the mentality (i.e. if you're going to play two strikers plus three offensive midfielders, they you better let them attack). Given the fact that this is Italy we're talking about, the latter is unlikely to happen, which means Serie A will have to cut down on the star quotient if it wants to do better in Europe.
Based in London, Gabriele Marcotti writes a weekly column on international soccer for CNNSI.com.
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