Ronaldinho reacts in despair as Milan fall to
Manchester United. Photograph: Neal Simpson/Empics Sport
Milan had come to fail. Despondency
was close to the surface and bound to overwhelm the side as soon as
Manchester United scored. The visitors were diligent enough, but
they could not fend off a weariness of soul and body in the 4‑0
loss. Too much has rested on them for too long.
In the past six seasons Milan have won the European Cup, lost a
final, gone out in the semi-finals and featured in the last 16.
They have done everything feasible to shore up the standing of
Italian football. There are too many veterans in Leonardo's squad,
but even hyperactive youths would have buckled under that
workload.
The situation is strange since Serie A once understood the nature of
modern football when other countries, including England, had a
provincial attitude. The cosmopolitan outlook is long‑established
in Italy. When Marco van Basten was followed to San Siro in the
late 80s by Frank Rijkaard and Ruud Gullit, elder Milan fans had
the excuse to reminisce about "Gre-No-Li", the Swedish trio of
Gunnar Gren, Gunnar Nordahl and Nils Liedholm who had such impact
three decades before.
Italy has been so eclectic in its football tastes that the
Argentinian-born Julio Libonatti was top scorer as long ago as
1928. Torino had reached across the Atlantic to pluck him from
Newell's Old Boys. At present Serie A has mislaid its knack
for securing outstanding players at the very peak of their powers.
With Italy as World Cup-holders the domestic talent is undeniable,
but some are on the wane. Alessandro Nesta played shakily against
United in the first leg and the defender was not fit to take part
in the return.
It would still be nonsensical to claim that all Italian clubs
are in decline. Fiorentina might well have gone through to the
quarter-finals of the Champions
League had they not seen an invalid goal outrageously
allowed in the away leg of a hard-fought tie with Bayern Munich.
Their coach Cesare Prandelli has the status to be considered a
possible replacement for Manuel Pellegrini, who is in grave danger
following the vote of confidence at Real Madrid.
Elsewhere in Italy Internazionale are improving, with a broader
range to their play now that José Mourinho has employed the funds
raised by selling Zlatan Ibrahimovic to bring in Wesley Sneijder
and others. The 2-1 defeat of Chelsea was surely the match of the
season to date and it is far from impossible that the Premier
League club will be eliminated when Mourinho comes back to his old
club next week.
Serie A is very far from extinction, but it does have a range of
difficulties. Some are found on a highly individual level. Now that
he is prime minister of the country Silvio Berlusconi seems like a
man who can always find a moment to interfere in team selection,
but is far too busy actually to lead Milan. A group left to grow
old together personifies perfectly the lack of strategy.
The strength leaks out of Serie A in other ways as well. Even if
Italian fans were never naive in the first-place, the match-fixing
scandals have been demoralising. Any country can run into trouble
with hooliganism, but it is still unsettling to hear of Juventus
fans setting fire to seats inside the Stadio Olimpico
The club moved out of the charmless Stadio delle Alpi in 2006
but intend to build a new ground on that site. Its capacity would
be a fairly modest 41,000. That reflects the shrinkage in Serie A.
While the Premier League has exploited the advantage of the widely
understood English language to market its games globally, the
Italians have not been able to turn their own matches into
international television events.
Income is affected, too, by ticket prices that are low by
comparison with those endured here. It then becomes a
self-fulfilling prophecy that Serie A will be affected by a lack of
glamour. With Kaká gone to Real Madrid, Milan must do what they can
to make Ronaldinho seem charismatic once more, even if his main
ambition is somehow to persuade Dunga that he has reformed
sufficiently to be worth a place in Brazil's plans. Klaas-Jan
Huntelaar, a more recent signing, has been an expensive source of
dismay.
These are awkward days and Serie A badly needs club owners of
imagination and enterprise. Nonetheless, Chelsea will have to take
care that Mourinho does not single-handedly rehabilitate Italian
club football next week.
