Porthos
Mentor
Serie A is over. Juventus is the new/old Champion, Roma in the Champion's League, with Lazio in CL qualifications. Fiorentina and Napoli are in Europa league, while Sampdoria in in the EL qualifications. Cagliari (the only team from the island of Sardinia), Cesena and Parma will be relegated - Parma (winner of 2 Uefa Cups) is bankrupt and its future is in doubt - no buyers for now. Two small teams from provincial cities which never played in Serie A - Carpi and Frosinone, were promoted from Serie B. Here's the table:
The only thing to decide is the third team which wil be promoted from Serie B, an this will be decided next week in a play-off between Bologna and Pescara, with Bologna a big favorite. A couple of closing remarks on this years season:
- Serie A is fast becoming a pretty boring - a 1 team competition with Juventus dominating the league for he fourth year in a row, and there is no end in sight to their domination. The number 1. spot was decided around Christmas. This is similar to trends in some other leagues where there is a tremendous concentration of power on the top (for example Bundesliga - another one-team-competition decided by Christmas).
- The would-be Juventus competitors have all falen way behind. The once mighty Milanese teams Inter and Milan ended up in 8. and 10. position, not even being able to clinch a place in the Europa League. Roma, the second placed team, is 17 points behind Juventus. Lazio did pretty well with the third place, but was never really competing for the first place. Napoli - a team that spent a lot of money last year - was a complete disappointment. Fiorentina did consistently well, but is also not competitive at the very top. Teams from Genova (Genoa and Sampdoria) did pretty well this year.
- Financially many of the teams are struggling, with Parma going bankrupt in the middle of the competition, crumbling infrastructure/stadia everywhere, declining viewership (8,387,000 spectators this year, 357,000 less than last year). Roma is the team with most spectators - on average 40 thousands, followed by Juventus with 39 thousands. Some of the famous teams were bought by foreignr owners (Inter is owned by the Indonesian Tohir, and AC Milan is in the process of being sold to Mr. Bee from Thailand), but the results of these supposed "investments" are inconclusive at best. Nevertheless, a team from Seria A (Juventus) did manage to clinch a place in the CL final, and two other teams reached the Europa League semifinals (Napoli and Fiorentina), which is a great success and makes Serie A one of the most successful Leagues in Europe (after the Spanish Liga).
- Player-wise the league is pretty old (average player age is 27.2 vs. 25.4 in the German Bundesliga or 26.8 in the English Premier League), with some of the best players in their late 30s (Toni, Totti, DiNatale, Pirlo). This is due to the consistent influx of cheaper foreign players which are are cutting out younger Italian players from getting play time. Nevertheless, there were some interesting young Italian players that emerged last year - strikers Simone Berardi and Simone Zazza from Sassuolo, defender Daniele Rugani and striker Manuel Pucciarelli from Empoli, Goalkeepers Simone Scuffet from Udinese (Dino Zoff's heir?), Matteo Perrin from Genova and Marco Sportiello from Atalanta, and a couple of others, but all in all the future does not look very good. It seems that young italian players only get playing time in smaller provincial teams.
- Etnically / Racially Serie A is similar to last year. Still overwhelmingly white (foreign players are more than 50%, but most are White Argentinians, Eastern Europeans and White/mixed Brazilians). It is still significantly whiter than EPL or the French league, although slightly darker than Bundesliga and significantly darker than the Spanish Liga which - not surprisingly - is dominating European competitions. However, the cult of the Negro player is advancing here too (we have seen that just yesterday with Juve playing 3 blacks in the CL finale) and we are seeing an increasing number of black African, "French" and other players as well as Arab players from North Africa, a trend that I see increasing next year. On the positive note we have seen the whitening of AC Milan after the departure of Massimiliano Allegri, and several almost completely white/Italian provincial teams which did pretty well (Sassuolo, Empoli). From that point of view, the promotion of provincial teams like Carpi and Frosinone to Serie A is a positive development.
Best wishes for the summer vacations and see you in late August for a new Serie A thread.
The only thing to decide is the third team which wil be promoted from Serie B, an this will be decided next week in a play-off between Bologna and Pescara, with Bologna a big favorite. A couple of closing remarks on this years season:
- Serie A is fast becoming a pretty boring - a 1 team competition with Juventus dominating the league for he fourth year in a row, and there is no end in sight to their domination. The number 1. spot was decided around Christmas. This is similar to trends in some other leagues where there is a tremendous concentration of power on the top (for example Bundesliga - another one-team-competition decided by Christmas).
- The would-be Juventus competitors have all falen way behind. The once mighty Milanese teams Inter and Milan ended up in 8. and 10. position, not even being able to clinch a place in the Europa League. Roma, the second placed team, is 17 points behind Juventus. Lazio did pretty well with the third place, but was never really competing for the first place. Napoli - a team that spent a lot of money last year - was a complete disappointment. Fiorentina did consistently well, but is also not competitive at the very top. Teams from Genova (Genoa and Sampdoria) did pretty well this year.
- Financially many of the teams are struggling, with Parma going bankrupt in the middle of the competition, crumbling infrastructure/stadia everywhere, declining viewership (8,387,000 spectators this year, 357,000 less than last year). Roma is the team with most spectators - on average 40 thousands, followed by Juventus with 39 thousands. Some of the famous teams were bought by foreignr owners (Inter is owned by the Indonesian Tohir, and AC Milan is in the process of being sold to Mr. Bee from Thailand), but the results of these supposed "investments" are inconclusive at best. Nevertheless, a team from Seria A (Juventus) did manage to clinch a place in the CL final, and two other teams reached the Europa League semifinals (Napoli and Fiorentina), which is a great success and makes Serie A one of the most successful Leagues in Europe (after the Spanish Liga).
- Player-wise the league is pretty old (average player age is 27.2 vs. 25.4 in the German Bundesliga or 26.8 in the English Premier League), with some of the best players in their late 30s (Toni, Totti, DiNatale, Pirlo). This is due to the consistent influx of cheaper foreign players which are are cutting out younger Italian players from getting play time. Nevertheless, there were some interesting young Italian players that emerged last year - strikers Simone Berardi and Simone Zazza from Sassuolo, defender Daniele Rugani and striker Manuel Pucciarelli from Empoli, Goalkeepers Simone Scuffet from Udinese (Dino Zoff's heir?), Matteo Perrin from Genova and Marco Sportiello from Atalanta, and a couple of others, but all in all the future does not look very good. It seems that young italian players only get playing time in smaller provincial teams.
- Etnically / Racially Serie A is similar to last year. Still overwhelmingly white (foreign players are more than 50%, but most are White Argentinians, Eastern Europeans and White/mixed Brazilians). It is still significantly whiter than EPL or the French league, although slightly darker than Bundesliga and significantly darker than the Spanish Liga which - not surprisingly - is dominating European competitions. However, the cult of the Negro player is advancing here too (we have seen that just yesterday with Juve playing 3 blacks in the CL finale) and we are seeing an increasing number of black African, "French" and other players as well as Arab players from North Africa, a trend that I see increasing next year. On the positive note we have seen the whitening of AC Milan after the departure of Massimiliano Allegri, and several almost completely white/Italian provincial teams which did pretty well (Sassuolo, Empoli). From that point of view, the promotion of provincial teams like Carpi and Frosinone to Serie A is a positive development.
Best wishes for the summer vacations and see you in late August for a new Serie A thread.
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