Re: Serie A Thread - 2008/2009 Season
I don't think its too much down to money at the moment, but down to confidence and mentality.
well, i'd rather say it's a bit of all. u build up your confidence by achieving good results, u achieve good results by building a good team.... and u defeinitely can't build a good team withou money.
btw to be honest i really don't see what's the problem with this british dominance. it's a phase. and it's true the british clubs are applying the same policies that italian clubs used to. so we can't really blame them.
sure we could say that the british club don't really offer a good model in terms of management (on this concern young gun, the epl top 4 coaches aren't the best out there.... they are among the best.... but there are also other coaches outside england who are on par or even better than them).....
..... but as a matter of fact, their poor management, that ridiculously pumped up market they created in england, by paying every player (the good and the mediocre ones) 3 times his value.... is nothing but a consequence of their wealth.
let's just consider fiorentina, napoli, roma and lazio. theese clubs are today considered (along with sevilla and a couple of french clubs) "the optimum" in terms of management. clever boards, great team directors and top class managers were able to build great teams with very little funds.
but 10, 15 years ago, theese clubs (roma, lazio and fiorentina) used to apply the same policies british clubs apply today.
Sensi (former roma chairman) wasted a fortune trying to keep up with milan, inter and juve, we all remember that crazy cassano deal don't we? a kid bought for 60 billions liras (the equivalent of 30 millions euros) after just 1 season in serie a. and what about emerson, montella, batistuta, samuel....
Lazio is today a benchmark in terms of management... any british team director (even the top ones) should go there and really learn how to raise a football team, how to build a serious scouts network without wasting ridiculous ammounts of money....
but then again, Lotito, the current chairman of lazio, is the one who saved lazio from bankrupt, isn't he? because lotito's predecessor (cragnotti) feeded lazio's pride with debts... yes he built an amazing team (veron, signori, nesta, crespo, boksic, nedved, mihajlovic, mancini, vieri, salas, stankovic....)..... but to be honest everybody could build an amazing team with unlimited funds.... he let lazio's debts grow each and every year, and then, one day, lazio's fans woke up and realised that great team they had the day before was very close to die.
and shall we talk about fiorentina? Platini keeps praising the Della Valle family for their outstanding job... and he's right.... but Della Valle bought the club right after the bankrupt.... Cecchi Gori (della valle's predecessor) applied the same policies of the Sensi family at roma, the same policies Cragnotti applied at lazio...
so what i'm trying to say here is... it's not like we suddenly became "good managers".... we became good managers because we had no other chances... that's the reason of our penny-wise policies today... it was either that or seeing our clubs facing bankrupt, one after another.
good thing is, once we realised how close to destroying our league we were, we issued some rules. and agencies or bodies like the covisoc, are here today to prevent us to kill ourselves again.
coz u can be sure, if there wasn't the covisoc, checking our clubs balance sheets, then we would easily repeat the same mistakes, once we would be riches again.
and that's the only real issue of british football today. they should learn from our experience, and regulate the incomes\debts ratio before it's too late, they should create a body like the covisoc, before it's too late.
that's even more important for them than it was for us. because when we faced our problems it was too late, but we were able to survive coz we could count on top class coaches (not just 4 top class coaches, an entire generation of great coaches) and great team directors. england today has none of theese, their dominance is supported just by their financial power.... so if they would loose this power they would go down.... with no parachutes.
that's it.
but having said that, having sugar daddys who build great teams is not the end of the world (as long as theese sugar daddies really spend their own money, and not creating debts wich go right on the club's shoulders).
sure they look pretty incompetent, especially compared to some of their italian counterparts.... but then again, if every coach in europe were as good as prandelli or spalletti, they wouldn't be special anymore.
if most of the clubs in europe could count on top class team directors such monchi, corvino, leonardi, marino.... then they wouldn't be special anymore.
i would love to see all the clubs in europe directed by coaches like prandelli and team directors like corvino.... but the thing is there aren't many prandellis and corvinos out there... espacially in england.
so if u would put financial limitations for all the clubs in europe, then the competitiveness ratio would go up, but the overall quality of the football would brutally go down, because chelsea, man utd, liverpool, arsenal, barca, real madrid, all theese clubs could never do what prandelli and corvino did at fiorentina, what pradè and spalletti did at roma, what rossi and sabatini did at lazio, what marino and leonardi did at udinese.
so, from a selfish point of view, i have to say i'm ok with the way things are right now. there's no problem for me if british clubs burn every year loads of millions (those money wouldn't go in charity anyway, wouldn't they?).... as long as i can watch such a great team as chelsea and man utd playing....
i just wish epl will realise they should keep the club's management under control, to avoid disasters.
however Gerd, i certainly understand and respect your points here:
Football is in need of open accounting and clubs who have huge debts should not be permitted to play the CL...the Ronaldo's, Berbatovs and Rooneys would go to other clubs...and that would be the moment to make a fair competition. The Ronaldo's, Berbatovs and Rooneys shouyld go to different clubs in different competitions.
I've said that hunders times, look at NBA and other US sports competitions. The fact that 3 out 4 semi-finalists are from the same competition is a bad thing (and it doesn't matter to if they are English, Spanish or Italian...i would say the same thing if they were Belgian).
the thing is i don't think this will ever happen. the european football world is very different from nba and other american sports. sponsors and tv deals are even more important here than they are in the us.... and they keep feeding football's market precisely coz this market knows no restrictions.
if we would put those restrictions many those sponsors would go away with their money.... and that's why i can't really see that happening
i do believe that football clubs shouldn't be considered as normal companies (also because this is what the law says). i do believe that football clubs shouldn't be allowed to have any debts at all.....
but with such restrictions the glazers, the abramovichs, they wouldn't be interested in football.... and there are too many people interested in their money out there, to let them go....
so there's no point in talking about the impossible.
but establishing a limitation to the salaries and a limitation to the incomes\debts ratio... that probably wouldn't be impossible
Edit:
PLF said:
p.s. One of my Italian friends here tells me Pirlo is incredibly rich (his family) and would've been even if he hadn't turned into such a famous world-class player. Something with his dad owning big oil company or something? can anyone confirm. Now I'm a bit curious...
i forgot to answer to your question Sina
actually i never heard about pirlo's family... however i'm gonna gather some intelligences and report
and what you're saying about Diego making a big impact on the 'final' movements/passes before a chance is created or goal is scored is very true. 
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