Is Italian soccer on the decline? - by Ian Rose
On the surface, Italian football (as most of the world calls the sport) is on top of the world. Italy is defending World Cup champion, having defeated France in the 2006 final. AC Milan, one of the top teams in Italy, won last year’s Champions League, and so is the defending club champion of all Europe. But all is not well. Controversy has rocked Italian soccer over the past few years, including a match-fixing scandal that involved some of the league’s top teams and fan violence that led to the death of an Italian police officer at a match last season. This was to be the year of recovery, the year that everything got back to normal and Italy took its rightful place at the top. Things haven’t turned out nearly so well.
This was a rough week for the Italian game. First, AC Milan lost an important Champions League match to Scottish champions Celtic, dropping below them in the race to move on in the competition. Then, and perhaps more importantly, three of the four Italian teams in the UEFA Cup, Europe’s second-tier tournament, were eliminated in one day. Though the UEFA Cup doesn’t offer nearly the financial windfall that a long stay in the Champions League does, it can be very important for determining league ranks, which do have cash ramifications.
