5 Reasons Why Italian Football Has Fallen Off Its Perch
As referee Istvan Kovacs blew the final whistle to end the 2025 Champions League Final, Inter players fell to the ground, overwhelmed in tears. They were not beaten by last-minute goals like how Inter had subjected their semi-finals to Barcelona, but they were beaten 5-0. The largest margin of defeat in a Champions League final and it is going to take a real effort for that scoreline or that margin to be beaten again. Etched into history, but for all the wrong reasons.
Let’s rewind to Italia 90. Italian football was on the perch of football. AC Milan had successfully defended their Champions League title (then European Cup), backed by the multi-millions of media mogul and future Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Italy was hosting the World Cup, and while Salvatore Schillaci shone through, West Germany won.
But Italy’s domination did not stop there. Italian football is backed by crazy businessmen pouring millions of Lire into the league, seeing it flourish. From the 1991/92 season till the 1997/98 season, the UEFA Champions League saw an Italian team enter the final. In the Europa League, a similar run occurred from the 1988/89 season to the 1995/96 season.
We even had an all-Italian final in the Europa League when Inter Milan and Lazio squared off in the 1997/98 final but the Zenith was when Milan and Juventus squared off in the 2003 Champions League at Old Trafford under the watchful eyes of Sir Alex Ferguson. Football is juxtaposed with the English Premier League on the rise and Italian football on the decline.
Fast forward to 2025, and only 2 times have Serie A clubs won the Champions League. Ancelotti’s Milan in 2007 and Inter Milan in 2010. Fifteen years on from 2010, no team has won the Champions League with four attempts, with Juventus and Inter Milan reaching two finals each, but every time they were thoroughly beaten.
Why has Italian Football fallen off this perch? Why has the peninsular nation, which has Calcio etched into its culture? Here are five reasons why:
1. Poor Revenues
Every year, Deloitte, one of the Big 4 auditing companies, publishes the “Deloitte Money League”. It is a list comprised of the revenues earned by Football clubs, and this gives us a real idea as to why Italian Football has fallen off.
In the year 2003, when we had the all-Italian final in Manchester, Juventus and Milan dominated the money league, being second and third, with only Manchester United earning more. But fast forward to 2025,
The last money league published based on the revenues of 2023/24 tell quite a story. Not a single Italian team made the top 10 in terms of revenue, with even German clubs like Borussia Dortmund earning more.
2. Lack of a stadium
While it is uncommon for teams and even more uncommon for rival clubs to share stadiums Italian football has 2 major rivalries seeing them share stadiums. The Milan clubs share San Siro while the Roman clubs share the Olimpico. But here’s the mind-blowing fact. None of these clubs owns the stadium they play in. The stadiums are owned by their respective city councils. While these clubs have tried to build their stadium, autocratic issues and red tape have hindered the clubs and while other clubs have built or renovated their stadiums to earn massive revenues, Italian clubs sit in their dilapidated stadiums with a good share of the club’s revenue going as rent to the City council.
3. Poor broadcasting rights
When the Premier League last sold their TV rights all over the world, it made close to €3 Billion in TV rights. While the Premier League is the gold standard in TV deals, the Italian league TV rights barely can make €1Bln. This meant that the team that finished in the last place (20th) in the Premier League earned more broadcasting rights than the team that won the Italian Serie A. In short, the windfall from winning a Serie A isn’t enough motivation for teams to win aside from the glory.
Lea también: Five of Top 12 European Teams Not Playing in Club World Cup 2025
4. Poor marketing and poor image
The 2006 Calciopoli scandal rocked the Italian football scene. An exposé with match-fixing scandals saw Italian football, which had won the World Cup a month before, fall from its grace, with Juventus being relegated to Serie B. This tarnished the league’s reputation beyond repair, and even today, Serie A has an image of being a “fixer league,” not being helped by the latest allegations against Inter of fictitious capital gains or Juventus’ point deduction in the 22/23 season.
But what has the league done to repair this image? In short, nothing. With mankind moving on with technology and the world becoming the proverbial “global village” with globalization, Serie A has yet to keep up to date with its Social media game and reach out to people outside of the continent. The rich history of the league is largely unknown to the global public, and the Italian football federation (FIGC) has done nothing about it.
5. Lack of Infrastructure
With France becoming an epicenter for talent in Europe, Italy is yet to match its production line from the 90s. Gone are the days when Italian defenders with their long locks would slide in and take the ball from world beaters such as Ronaldo, or gone are the days when a player with a ponytail would enthrall and amaze the world with his dribbling and silky touches. Italy sorely misses their Maldini’s and their Totti’s and Baggio, and the latest batch of Italians scream anything but quality.
A large part of this can be attributed to the lack of proper infrastructure and the refusal to modernize their scouting and player development techniques from a very young age. With Europe moving on a different plane with physicality and agility, Italians have remained slow and tactical, and this has put them behind in the global scene, with the country not able to qualify for the last two editions of the World Cup.
Conclusion
While Italy has not been able to produce world-class players, their coach production factory hasn’t stopped. Ancelotti, Conte, Gasperini, Max Allegri, and Simone Inzaghi have all shown that Italian coaches are still at the top when it comes to reading the game, but coaching can only take a team so far, and further investments and improvements are needed. So far, missing out on two World Cups hasn’t been a kick to the backside that it should have been with Italy in danger of missing out on a 3rd edition of the World Cup.
ES 
EN