[acid911]

Gotta be in it, to win it

This actually got me thinking, how many years it will take for Serie A to land four Champions League spots. Or is the league destined for two? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif) Pretty sad state of affairs, the way things are heading.

[Danny]

This actually got me thinking, how many years it will take for Serie A to land four Champions League spots. Or is the league destined for two? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif) Pretty sad state of affairs, the way things are heading.

Two. Co-efficient is just getting worse, rather than recovering. The glory days of the 90s when Italian teams were feared is long gone, and now Portugal is a stronger league. I said this back in the day to X-Off (who thoroughly disagreed), that Italy was now about equal in quality to Portugal. Well I think they've gone past us. Regularly have 3 sides in UCL now, while we used to have 4 and are struggling to hold on to 3.

[Danny]

Yep, but honestly speaking, do you see them achieving half of what they did last season?

The manager did have a huge part to play in it. Simeone was frankly incredible with Atleti last season, with improvement year after year. That included a EL triumph before last season.

But you can't do it without decent players.

They've lost the second best goalie around, one of the best strikers around, and one of the best LB's.

We'll see. Barca have addressed their tiki tika problem by getting rid of Xavi and seem to be returning to the Rijkaard school where individuality is as important as team play. And Real have REALLY bought well.

It'll be tough.

[Rossoneri7]

Two. Co-efficient is just getting worse, rather than recovering. The glory days of the 90s when Italian teams were feared is long gone, and now Portugal is a stronger league. I said this back in the day to X-Off (who thoroughly disagreed), that Italy was now about equal in quality to Portugal. Well I think they've gone past us. Regularly have 3 sides in UCL now, while we used to have 4 and are struggling to hold on to 3.

To put things into perspective, Milan's new sponsorship deal with Adidas is 200M over 10 years; thats 20M per season.

Man United's new deal with Adidas is 1Bn over ten years; thats 100M per season.


Now that is only the kit sponsor.

[han2503]

Two. Co-efficient is just getting worse, rather than recovering. The glory days of the 90s when Italian teams were feared is long gone, and now Portugal is a stronger league. I said this back in the day to X-Off (who thoroughly disagreed), that Italy was now about equal in quality to Portugal. Well I think they've gone past us. Regularly have 3 sides in UCL now, while we used to have 4 and are struggling to hold on to 3.

Yep, as things stand, Italy are closer to Portugal in the ranking than they are to Germany, and as you said, with the way things are going, it's expected that Portugal will surpass Italy in the next few years unless a small miracle happens.

I don't think this really says anything about the league's quality, Italy lost their ranking mostly due to teams performing terribly in the EL. Sending out the second string team for most games, Italian teams only started to suffer in the CL just recently, but the other teams have never really taken the EL seriously which is why Germany surpassed Italy to begin with, because Italian teams were doing better in the CL than their German counter parts when the co-efficient problem started

The manager did have a huge part to play in it. Simeone was frankly incredible with Atleti last season, with improvement year after year. That included a EL triumph before last season.

But you can't do it without decent players.

They've lost the second best goalie around, one of the best strikers around, and one of the best LB's.

We'll see. Barca have addressed their tiki tika problem by getting rid of Xavi and seem to be returning to the Rijkaard school where individuality is as important as team play. And Real have REALLY bought well.

It'll be tough.

Agreed