The decline of Italian football is really depressing. I genuinely hope the sport can bounce back. Juventus has shown a way forward for clubs, but it would be good to see the entire league do something collective to turn things around.
Juve's new stadium has really helped the club; too many Italian teams play in oversized, aging stadiums. Every club for themselves isn't working for Italy. The sport has declined some in the past couple of decades, and I don't see it turning around. Some sort of collective action to help turn the sport around seems called for. Collective bargaining on TV broadcast rights, perhaps a fund for stadium improvements, etc. I don't pretend to be knowledgeable, I'd just like to see Serie A make a comeback.
Is Italian soccer unusual tho? It seems to me that outside of England and Germany, it is more common for clubs to be struggling financially than not..
Germany for very good reasons. England's top two leagues have become the new super yachts of the rich and famous. In fact Evangelos Marinakis marked the delivery of his $30 million yacht by buying an old wreck of a football club in Nottingham.
Yeah, this "club > league" thing strikes me as a bit of a superficial slogan. There's a balance to be had, hence for example, parachute payments in English football. Conversely, there's also the use of EPL payments to wield political power over lower leagues. There's different approaches and one needn't be good/bad or right/wrong. Hopefully Italy can work its way out of this.
Italian soccer reminds me of England's in the 1980's: crumbling dated stadia and fan violence. Hard to see how it's going to turn things around in a hurry.
I'm sure the political climate isn't helping. Of course from that perspective, football's the least of their worries.
That's not much. In fact the average price payed for a superyacht built in the Netherlands is 57 million €€. https://www.ad.nl/economie/gouden-t...e-bouwers-van-luxueuze-superjachten~a40574c2/
Oh, I think it is the norm in many places. But Serie A is one of the big 4-5 Euro leagues; seeing it's decline in European football, the sad state of so many top clubs, and now Serie B having to suspend games--it's certainly a more noticeable development than the decline of Bulgarian football which I believe I mentioned in this thread a couple weeks ago.
Yes, but they're related. Italy's infrastructure as a whole has been crumbling for a quite a while and all those stadia that were built/renovated for Italia '90 are now in dire need of investment or demolition. Juventus, as mentioned, have built themselves a nice stadium and Lazio and Roma are crawling towards new stadia (but I'll believe it when i see it). But overall the picture is pretty depressing: Serie A has gone from the strongest league in the world to one with major issues.
Aside from a random indoor player or two Serie A was my first exposure to kids actually referencing pro soccer at soccer practice. Of course, the conversations didn't get much deeper than "AC Milan is the best!", but still.
I hope the mods appreciate how hard I'm trying not to crack wise about the correlation between kids liking big UEFA leagues and the US being ready for pro/rel...
Is that avatar... the Pittsburgh Stingers logo? The CISL was my first exposure to pro soccer too. (Which means I remember seeing a rivalry between another pair of dos Santos brothers, one of whose sons are now playing for the Galaxy.)
god I remember the CISL, and even the MISL before that. Used to go watch the Sockers (yep that's how they spelled it) be the only San Diego team actually winning stuff. Love hearing the stories from brits of going to matches in England in the 80's but you haven't lived until you watched some Yugo with an amazing mullet play in a hockey arena on astroturf. Now that's 'merican soccer for you!
Following a big European team doesn't automatically mean you won't then follow your local team. If anything else watching people having a great time supporting their side in Europe would make you more likely to replicate that at home, at least that's my thinking, and what I have seen in MLS where the support has generally mirrored the popularity of European Football.
Ah, yes. Even in the mid-90s, it seemed like well over a quarter of the players in US indoor soccer, including the younger ones, were from the former Yugoslavia. Sadly, they had mostly lost the mullets by then.