This, Serie A really need a rethink!! Stronger competition for the whole is better than 1/2 strong teams. If we have both Milan Teams, Juve, Roma, Lazio, Napoli and Fiorentina regularly doing well the TV deal should quite easily be increased.
This mean foreign investment, less red tape and for the Italian government to please with a cherry on fukin allow clubs to build their own infrastructure. I would love to see the inner workings of the bundesliga they're clubs seem operationally sounds.
https://sempreinter.com/2022/01/31/...e-end-of-2022-23-season-italian-media-detail/ - This is only letting us live another day, but like james bond all good things come to an end. RIP Daniel Craig.
Either sell, or we sell everything
Bundesliga is less of a business and more of a sport. Only Bayern managed to outgrow everything else and it's detrimental to the overall competitiveness.
Bayern pretty much became the dominant force in the 80s, until then, not so much apart from that surge in the mid 70s after Ajax which was more like a birth than a dynasty.
Apart from Bayern, everything else is cyclical in Germany. Dortmund emerged in the 90s and slowly returned in the 2010s, Schalke is gone, Hamburg is gone, Werder is gone, Stuttgart is irrelevant, as is Gladbach, with Frankfurt and Koln also being irrelevant. They have a lot of great rivalries over there but not enough at high level, at least not anymore since most of their derbies take place in the 2nd division this year!
Their infrastructure level is superb first of all because Germany has the most efficient government and system. They hosted the 2006 World Cup and will host the 2024 Euro.
Italy on the other hand last hosted the World Cup back in 1990, they built a useless stadium in Bari, the Delle Alpi was a disaster, they made inefficient changes to the Meazza by adding the third tier that ruins the grass due to the lack of sunlight, the Napoli stadium didn't look that much better so they fixed it again a couple of years ago, same story with the Firenze stadium, the Verona stadium is in need of heavy renovation, the Friuli had to be renovated and is now finally a decent stadium, the Genova stadium looked better before the renovation, the Palermo renovation was disastrous, not only from an infrastructure perspective, the Bologna stadium wasn't even touched and the Cagliari stadium had more faceovers than a Beverly Hills botox lady.
The only stadium that probably benefited from the World Cup is the Olimpico but both Roman clubs want to build their own.
When you consider that the only newly built stadium for the 1990 World Cup is now demolished... you can imagine how bad things are!
In Germany the only stadium that has been touched since then is the Stuttgart one. And that was 5 years after the World Cup, completely unrelated to any Germany 2024 bids!
It's not just the Germany vs Italy factor, we're talking about late 80 and early 90s football vs multi-televised 2000s football and multipurpose stadiums.
France also hosted a tournament in the 90s, making all the plans before the internationalization of the sport (Bosman ruling etc) and then hosted the 2016 Euro.
They had to build new stadiums or renovate them again. I think Italy would definitely had to renovate or build new stadiums if they hosted a tournament just 14-20 years after the World Cup.
England for example wants to host the World Cup, they've already renovated the Wembley since then, they built the Olympic stadium for 2012 and their clubs have been increasing the capacity of their existing stadiums, so realistically they do not really need to build or renovate any stadium. They're ready for a World Cup or Euro. Germany reached that level in the mid 2000s. France reached that level in the last 7-8 years.
Spain is not there.
Italy is not there.
These days, not even Portugal who hosted in 2004 are there and actually most of the world isn't there yet. But the issue is that since England, Germany and France are there, Italy has to get there as well. The only organic change was the English, all others were triggered by a big tournament coming their way.
Germany allegedly paid off some FIFA related officials to abstain from voting as South Africa would have gotten it instead and generally the idea of Germany and England doing everything fair while the French, Italians and Spanish are corrupt is naive propaganda
Spain tried to host the 2018 World Cup, along with Portugal.
Spain also bid for the 2004 Euro.
England tried to host the 2006 World, the 2018 World Cup and considers bidding for the 2030 World Cup (along with the rest of the UK & Ireland which is going to make qualification insanely difficult for everyone else)
Italy has not bid for a World Cup since 1990!
Best case scenario they bid for 2038, which is 16 years away!
Italy attempted to host the 2012 and 2016 Euros.
Remarkably, only 4 new stadiums were proposed during the two bids that Italy could have won. Napoli, Palermo, Fiorentina and Cagliari. The Meazza was considered just fine, as was the Olimpico. And Juventus' new stadium was considered but it was already supposed to be built.
They wanted to renovate the Bari, Cesena, Parma and Verona stadiums. By 2016, Napoli was ruled out of a new stadium, so renovations were considered instead.
So you can imagine that even hosting a big tournament cannot save Italy from the big red tape!