Atalanta pulled off a thrilling last-gasp comeback to advance to the last 16 of the Champions League. Juventus fought bravely until extra time with 10 men. However, this performance did not lift the dark clouds that hung over Italian soccer this week.
The 98th-minute penalty scored by Atalanta’s Lazar Samardzic means Italy will qualify for the next Champions League knockout stage.
But their giants have fallen.
There was a certain irony at San Siro on Tuesday night. Just before kick-off, Inter Milan welcomed club legends Ronaldo Nazario and Cristian Vieri to the pitch as special guests. The partnership between these two was once a powerful force in Serie A.
Work full time. That time has never felt further away. What followed on the pitch was that Inter, who had a 10-point lead at the top of Serie A, lost to Bodo/Glimt, who are currently in pre-season.
They didn’t just get beaten up. They suffered a crushing defeat against a team that was playing in the Champions League for the first time this season, let alone advancing to the knockout stages.
And losing in the final round deciding match against Norway’s first regular Champions League team in nearly 20 years was not only the worst result for Inter, but also the worst result for Italian football.
Bodo/Glimt players celebrate victory over Inter Piero Cruciatti/AFP (Getty Images)
The next day, Juventus regained some pride, but the 7-5 aggregate defeat against Galatasaray was still a surprising defeat for Serie A’s former powerhouse.
Current Serie A champions Napoli faltered at the first hurdle and were unable to progress from the league. AC Milan have not even participated in any European competitions this season.
While Bologna and Roma continued to fly the flag in the Europa League, Fiorentina finished 15th in the Conference League and needed a play-off against Poland’s Jagiellonia Bialystok to reach the last 16.
And when it comes to the playoffs, things could get even worse. Italy’s national team needs one to avoid missing out for a third time in the World Cup tournament, which the country has won four times. So what happened to Italian football as a whole?
It has been clear this season that Serie A teams are not up to the demands of European competition, especially the speed of play.
“The Italian team is playing at a slow pace,” Fabio Capello told Italy’s Sky. “When you play teams that run and press, they don’t have the quality, they’re not used to playing at a high pace and they make mistakes.
“That’s the key. Now we’re not used to being aggressive. As soon as they pick up the pace from the Italian league, they stop because it’s too difficult to challenge. It’s all about touching players’ ears, going down, things like that.”
“This is the result. Unfortunately, we are playing at a slow pace, but then it is difficult to be dangerous.”
The numbers back it up. The speed of Italy’s top flight has been declining over the past five seasons, with many commenting that the current style of play is slower than that of Europe’s other top five leagues.
Serie A has the second lowest playing speed among its European rivals, with only the French top team slower. No Ligue 1 club will qualify for a place in the top eight of the Champions League table.
The upward curve in speed of the Premier League over the past 12 months may explain its strong performance this season, with all six English teams safely and comfortably reaching the last 16.
The speed of play could be linked to the declining quality of players in the league, due in part to a lack of investment by clubs.
Where are the next generation of Italian stars?
The most expensive transfer made by an Italian club last summer was the £36 million transfer of Christopher Nkunku from Chelsea to AC Milan.
The most exciting signings, and perhaps the most successful, were the free transfers of Kevin De Bruyne, Luka Modric and Jamie Vardy.
Milan believe in the creativity of 40-year-old Modric, Juventus have former Bournemouth defender Lloyd Kelly (subjected in the second leg against Galatasaray) as their starting defender, and Davide Frattesi’s rise from almost joining Nottingham Forest in January to starting in the Champions League defeat to Bodo probably tells you all you need to know about that level.
Serie A has become increasingly reliant on older, more experienced players, but there is a dearth of promising young players from Italy.
Since last June, Inter’s young forward Pio Esposito is the only player under the age of 24 to have won a national team cap. England managed a dozen.
In 2025, Italy also awarded 1.9 percent of Serie A minutes to eligible players under the age of 21. This is the second lowest figure among the top 50 leagues in world football. Only the UAE Pro League achieved less.
This situation has been going on for some time. According to the CIES football observatory, Italy exported just 413 soccer balls between 2020 and 2025. It ranks 24th in the world after the United States, Japan, and Russia.
The other four countries in Europe’s top five leagues all managed more than 1,000 players in the same category. Italian players, young and old, are not as coveted as Europe’s elite.
A traditional tactical problem?
There is also a lack of tactical innovation at the heart of Italian football. While other leagues have been successful in incorporating new tactical insights from other parts of Europe, Italy seem a bit stuck in their ways.
Italian managers Max Allegri, Maurizio Sarri, Luciano Spalletti and Antonio Conte have bounced around Italy’s top clubs in recent years without much differentiation.
Even Atalanta replaced current Roma manager Gian Piero Gasperini with former Fiorentina manager Raffaele Palladino, while Inter also replaced Simone Inzaghi with Parma’s Cristian Chivu. Every schedule in Serie A seems to be within its own boundaries.
Cesc Fabregas’ overachieving Como revolution is a great example of what happens when you take tactical ideas from elsewhere. Another example is Carlos Cuesta, who joined from Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal backroom staff in the summer and is enjoying a successful spell at Parma.
Does the lack of infrastructure in Italian football (another topic that came up this week amid the club’s failures in Europe) have something to do with all these problems?
This year, no Italian team was in the top 10 richest teams in Europe in Deloitte’s Football Money League. The report added that the most important part of the wealthiest teams’ revenue was the way they used their stadiums on non-game days, such as the NFL contract with Tottenham Hotspur.
Italy’s plight can be seen at San Siro. This is the Pantheon Arena of the game, but it is unique because it is outdated and “old school”, which is why it is being renovated.
Just as Italian football compares to the rest of the continent, it lags far behind its European equivalents.
