Italy is no longer the final destination for the world’s top players and the Serie A clubs will struggle to keep the ones they do have unless big improvements are made, Juventus president Andrea Agnelli said yesterday.
Agnelli, 37, the fourth member of his family to run Italy’s most successful domestic club, said Italy had stagnated as a football country in the last year.
“If you go back about 10 or 15 years, it was the dream of every international footballer to come to Serie A,” he told delegates at the Leaders in Soccer conference at Stamford Bridge.
“It was the destination for top players. When I was a kid studying here in England you used to watch live Serie A games broadcast here. The English League was not what it is today.
“Now the German league is building on what it has achieved in the last 10 years, the Spanish league has its own unique environment and has two of the world’s most successful worldwide global brands, Real Madrid and Barcelona.
“France has benefited from overseas investments.”
Agnelli said that from a football point of view Serie A was no longer the final destination for players but a transitory destination.
“Where will we be in two or three years, will we be able to keep players like Paul Pogba, for example? I don’t think we have the economic strength to retain such a player.
“Look at Milan, they had to give away (Zlatan) Ibrahimovic. We need to have greater economic strength.”
Italy has slipped from second to fourth in the UEFA coefficient ranking system since 2006, meaning it has only three clubs in the Champions League instead of four.
Last season they only had two teams in the competition proper because Udinese lost in the qualifying rounds, and although Juventus reached the quarter-finals and earned €65.6 million, Agnelli is still worried about the future.
“It was an anomaly that we earned that much as the Italian market pool is so big and was set up when we had four teams but last season was split between two teams (Juventus and Milan),” he said.
“But you must be in the Champions League because that is where you have the international exposure.
“However, we need reforms in Italy. We have to look at our stadiums, that is where the difference is made, on ticketing and on income streams. That is our No.1 reform, and that is where the broadcasters come in.
“If we have a good show in the stadium and show it off to the full, that is the way to increase the broadcasting income, and that is just the start.”