Written By: Robin van Paassen
Edited By: Irtaza Khan
Over the last decade and ever since the turn of the century, Italy's top football league Serie A has lost a lot of its touch as once the most renowned league in the world. What happened?
In the 1980s, Maradona, Van Basten, Rijkaard, Platini, and numerous players tore up the Italian football scene bringing them to the forefront of Europe's top leagues. The 1990s were similar to the birth of new global superstars such as Zanetti, Baggio, Ronaldo, Batistuta, and Maldini. During these decades, Italian clubs won countless European trophies. The competition was stiff, and no one menaced their way to the top of the table for more than three years consecutively. Scintillating football was seemingly a given in Serie A. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end. The pace of the past two decades came to a halt in the early 2000s. The talent was still ever-present, but that was not the issue.
The Champions League winnings by A.C Milan and Internazionale were the facade for a crumbling Italian league. Tired stadiums, scandals, and other controversies led to the demise of the illustrious top-flight division. Ultimately, the inadequacy of vigorous title contenders has led to Internazionale winning five consecutive years. Just about followed by Juventus becoming reigning Scudetto champions for the next nine years. Despite continued dominance by Juventus at the top of Serie A, akin to Paris Saint Germain's reign over Ligue 1, a glimpse of change shimmered in the recent 2019/20 season through to this season.
A sort of rejuvenation is seemingly occurring, not with "Juve" or Juventus, for the matter of fact, but all other contending teams. Serie A is reshaping the competitive landscape to what it once was.
While many of Serie A's issues remain, competitiveness within the game is dynamically shifting. Analyzing differences between point standings at the end of seasons, in the eight years prior to the 19/20 campaign, Juventus only won the title by four points on three occasions. Even though title contention was narrow in all three incidents, only one or two clubs managed to contend with Juventus. In the 11/12 campaign, Milan finished with 80 points, while all other competition finished with at least 16 points below Milan. In a comparable 16/17 season, only AS Roma and SSC Napoli were able to come within four and five points at 87 and 86, respectively, while all other contenders were a minimum of 14 points below third place. Followed by the 17/18 season, where only Napoli came measly close with 91 points, whereas all other teams suffered a gap of at least 14 points from second place. On the contrary, Juventus won the league with point differences of 17 on multiple occasions. On average Italian clubs fell by a staggering 9.375 points to the serial Scudetto winners.
The 19/20 season saw Juventus's results adversely affected, giving optimism to contending teams in the future. By dropping points in the final games, Juventus narrowly scraped by with a single point difference over Internazionale to win the Scudetto. The most significant difference in the last season was the point distributions, wherein this calendar season, the only sizable deficit between the top six clubs was eight points. Juventus finished with 83 points, Internazionale at 82 points, Atalanta and Lazio a respective 78, AS Roma 70, and AC Milan a 66 of a possible 114 points. The elusive monopoly Juventus held over Serie A surely will be overtaken as it looks to be moving into 2021.
Heading into the new year, Juventus dwells in a lowly sixth place and shows glimpses of possibly conceding their potential tenth title. A.C Milan and Internazionale are in tenacious form, seated ten and nine points respectively, ahead of Juventus's mere 24 of a potential 42 points. For only the second time in the decade, Juventus has fallen to 24 points in the title on matchday 14, which was back in the 15/16 season, where SSC Napoli was in top form with 31 points. Only time will tell if Juventus can come from below 30 points and claim the Scudetto.
Many factors determine a club's fate, so points tally cannot tell the entire tale. Several unsuccessful Champions League spells have seen multiple coaches shown the exit in Juventus's attempt to be crowned the best team in Europe.
Despite amassing numerous talents and pricey transfers over the last seasons, including Ronaldo, Dybala, and De Ligt to fill positions, other Italian clubs have been developing and importing talent at an equal pace. Boasting a 1.39-billion-dollar transfer spending fee over the last decade, Juventus, bolstered with talent, has yet to prove itself outside the domestic level. While several clubs have spent nearly a billion dollars insufficiently, in the last season, Italian football has shimmered in the limelight in European accomplishments seeing Atalanta reach the Champions League and Internazionale reach the Europa Cup Final.
These European achievements may be a big stepping-stone for Italian clubs and the collateral downfall at the helm of Andrea Pirlo - the coach of Juventus and a Serie A club legend.
Domestically Juventus display a wall of defense, only conceding 13 times fewer than the top five clubs, only one more than SSC Napoli and the rest of the league. Weaknesses stem from underperforming in the final third, in which Juventus have squeezed past 25 goals this season. Crucially, four came from penalties. In comparison, A.C Milan boasts 32 goals and second place Internazionale has netted 34 goals, despite only six and three goals respectively from the penalty spot. A reminiscent unsatisfactory start to a season for Juventus, where in the 15/16 campaign they were fifth in the table on the 14th matchday, conceding 11 and bagging as few as 20 goals. Although Juventus became champions that season, the competition appears to be stopping them dead in their tracks this time. Though suffering just a single loss in a 3-0 thumping to Fiorentina in the final game of 2020, Juventus still have time to turn tides in the New Year.
As far as the fall of Juventus's empire unfolds, a new champion isn't nearly out of the picture for this campaign. A.C Milan and Co are looking to cement what they came so close to in the last campaign. Rejuvenation of talent and competitiveness across top clubs may finally break Juventus's reign. Domestic success can very well translate outside of Serie A into European competition where teams have the chance to garner fans from new avenues through newfound success.
Robin van Paassen
2nd Year Honours Commerce Student
Sources:
- https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1136511-serie-a-the-slow-death-of-the-greatest-league-in-europe
- https://www.theguardian.com/football/the-gentleman-ultra/2018/aug/31/serie-a-team-of-the-1990s
- https://www.theguardian.com/football/the-gentleman-ultra/2019/jul/04/serie-a-team-of-the-1980s
- https://www.celebrazio.net/soccer/seriea/index.html
- https://www.transfermarkt.us/serie-a/spieltagtabelle/wettbewerb/IT1/saison_id/2020
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