FILE PHOTO: Excitement is building among Napoli's fervent fans as the club looks set to break the 22-year Serie A stranglehold of teams from Italy's richer north. PICTURE: AFP
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0 ITALY: Inter Milan will contest the UEFA Champions League final, the biggest club cup competition in Europe, against Manchester City.
Three Serie A clubs will contest the UEFA champions league, the Europa League and the Europa Conference League. Internazionale Milan, AS Roma and Fiorentina have put Italian football back on the map and in the conversation when it comes to European football.
Inter Milan will contest the UEFA Champions League final, the biggest club cup competition in Europe, against Manchester City, a tough assignment. Although Manchester City is a rich vein of form, firing on all cylinders, the Italian side, which has hardened veterans and grit, can pull it off. Incidentally, Milan is the last Italian club to win the competition. This happened in 2010 against Bayern Munich, a German club.
A rejuvenated AS Roma will be playing in its second successive European final under a Portuguese mentor, Jose Mourinho. Roma won the Conference League last season and thus is on course to claim its second European trophy against Sevilla FC, a Spanish club that has bossed the competition with six titles under its name.
Mourinho would have to pull out ‘something special’ up his sleeve to upset the Europa League kings. ‘The Special One,’ as the Roma mentor flamboyantly describes himself, is capable of galvanizing any side into a champion.
A European cup has been elusive for Fiorentina since winning its only one in the 1960s. The Italian side will contest the Conference League final against West Ham United, which plies its trade in the English Premier League (EPL).
While rebuilding itself, the Italian Serie A has been in the shadows of other major leagues, whose clubs’ successes largely rely on lucrative market transfers. The Serie A is banking on experience; it is thus the league of grit and guts, not the glitz and glamour.
If the Italian clubs bring the European trophies to Italy, then the talk of Serie A being a little league or farmer’s league has to end. To put into perspective how good Serie A clubs have been doing well in Europe this season, three of the eight UEFA champions league quarterfinals were from Italy and two of the four semi-finalists were from the Serie A.
The restoration of Italian football is happening in real-time, with no spotlight and drama of record transfers.
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