Remember when Italy ruled Europe? Arsenal and Chelsea should have nothing to fear now... Serie A on the slide

Out of the deep freeze comes the Champions League with two scoops of England versus Italy to send a tingle down the spine.

European football was created for these epic clashes of culture and history, evoking grainy images of master technicians in shirts featuring mainly black stripes, but Italian pride has been damaged in recent years.

This has nothing to do with the flight of Don Fabio but concerns the slide of a footballing nation which has brought home the World Cup four times and produced more European Cup finalists (26) than any other.

Cheer we go: AC Milan celebrate beating Liverpool in the 2007 Champions League final in Athens

THE BIG FIXTURES:

Tuesday February 15

AC Milan v Arsenal Tuesday February 21

Napoli v Chelsea Tuesday March 6

Arsenal v AC Milan Wednesday March 14

Chelsea v Napoli

Since the high-water mark of 2003 — when Milan beat Inter in the semi-final and overcame Juventus on penalties in a turgid final at Old Trafford — Italian teams have been a fading force in the Champions League.

In terms of lifting the trophy they have fared no worse than the English. Milan won in 2007 and Inter three years later. But Italian clubs have made only four appearances in semifinals since 2003, compared to 14 from England.

Milan have not reached the last four since 2007, when they beat Liverpool in Athens to avenge Istanbul and win their seventh European title, the last great achievement of Carlo Ancelotti’s Rossoneri vintage.



Jose Mourinho’s Inter won three years later without an Italian on the pitch in the final against Bayern Munich until Marco Materazzi appeared in the second minute of stoppage time.

Winners: Portuguese coach Jose Mourinho guided Inter Milan to the Champions League without an Italian on the pitch in the final

This year the trend becomes more tangible because UEFA’s co- efficient takes a grip and Serie A surrenders its fourth Champions League spot to the Bundesliga.



It is a sobering step backwards for a nation accustomed to the finest football and the trend is reflected across its domestic game in falling attendances. Snow fell in the first weekend in February but 200,000 empty seats at Serie A games were not all the fault of the Arctic snap.

‘The golden age is finished,’ says Roberto Perrone, of Corriere della Sport. ‘Until 2000, the top players in the world would come to Italy.

‘We had Platini, Zico, Maradona, Rummenigge and Falcao in the Eighties and the first players to leave the Soviet Union to play abroad came to Italy — Sergei Alenikov and Oleksandr Zavarov.



‘Then we had Van Basten, Gullit, Rijkaard, Ronaldo, Zidane.

‘Now the Italian clubs don’t have the capacity to compete with Spanish and English clubs. In the past, Messi and Ronaldo would play in Italy. Now it is impossible.’

The global financial problems have hit hard at clubs already weakened by the ‘Calciopoli’ match- fixing scandal which broke in 2006 and still rumbles on.

Where are the fans? Milan's Thiago Silva battles with Tommaso Rocchi of Lazio in front of thousands of empty seats at the Stadio Olimpico

The personal fortunes of Milan president Silvio Berlusconi and Inter president Massimo Moratti may be safe but they are more prudent in the transfer market these days.

Milan wanted Carlos Tevez but settled for Maxi Lopez instead. The big Italian teams trailed Basle’s Xedran Shaqiri before he agreed to join Bayern Munich. ‘Twenty years ago, if Milan wanted a player, he arrived,’ adds Perrone.



Juventus, traditionally more cost conscious than the Milan clubs, have resolved to pay only their top three or four stars more than £70,000 a week at a time when Manchester City pay their best players more than £200,000.



Others offer more than City, as Samuel Eto’o, now playing for Russia’s Anzhi Makhachkala, found.



Deal and no deal: AC Milan wanted to sign Carlos Tevez and ended up signing Maxi Lopez



Italian clubs cannot generate match-day income to rival their English counterparts.



Almost all Italy’s stadiums are municipally owned and barely modernised since the 1990 World Cup. Corporate facilities are unsophisticated. Milan and Inter can attract 80,000 to the San Siro but sell their merchandise from a glorified caravan in the car park.

Meanwhile, the cash tills are ringing at Juventus as they bank the rewards of a shiny, new, privately-owned stadium, with capacity crowds close to the pitch, adjacent mall, megastore and museum. Revenue has risen by 12 per cent.

Fan-tastic: AC Milan regularly attract 80,000 supporters at the San Siro

As in England, financial issues bite a little harder in the game’s lower reaches. The top tier of Lega Pro (formerly Serie C) has 18 teams and nine of them have had points deducted this season because of financial irregularities, like unpaid taxes and salaries.



At this level, they regularly play to fewer than a thousand fans.



Albinoleffe — a Serie B club formed by a merger of Albinense and Leffe in 1998 — share Atalanta’s 25,000-seater stadium in Bergamo, less than an hour from the hotbed of Milan. Three sides of the ground are closed on match-day and, when promotion-seeking Varese visited earlier this month, the main stand was sparsely populated, mainly by weathered old men who seemed glad to be out of the house.

Not a crowd puller: Ruben Garlini of Albinoleffe in action but they struggle to attract fans for home games

Outside a bar, across the road from the point where away fans disembark their coaches, a small group of young fans gather, occasionally bursting into song.

Carabinieri vans are parked up nearby, with armoured policemen stamping feet and blowing into their hands to stay warm. This one is not about to kick off, but their presence is a reminder of the violent thread still running through the Italian match-day experience.

This was a game between the teams 19th and sixth in the league (that’s Ipswich v Hull in the most basic of comparisons).



The visitors, who won 2-1, brought maybe a hundred fans and the home side around a thousand.

A day later, in Serie A, 33,000 wallowed in the vast Stadio Olimpico as Roma beat Inter 4-0, fewer than 20,000 saw Genoa beat Lazio and around 10,000 watched Fiorentina beat Udinese in a stadium for 46,000. Only Juventus were anywhere close to capacity.

‘When I was playing in Italy, the stadiums were packed every week but now they’re just not getting the people in,’ says former England striker Mark Hateley, who played for AC Milan from 1984 to 1987 and is a TV pundit on Italian football.



As spectators vanish, clubs have become over-reliant on TV income (cameras now venture into the dressing rooms) and open-minded to foreign investment, the first of which arrived last summer with an American takeover at Roma.

Others are concerned about a void in the native talent pool. Former Chelsea, Napoli and Parma star Gianfranco Zola says: ‘Improving the atmosphere is a big thing, because the players will respond, but we also have to improve the quality of the young players.

Make some noise: Former Napoli star Gianfranco Zola believes the atmosphere inside the grounds

‘In the past Italy has produced good players from the streets — I learned to play on the street — and now the kids are schooled mainly in academies. The academies are good but they can’t give you that extra quality. Also, they have a tendency to choose young players who are more physical and tactical and sacrifice good young players who can play but don’t have the physique.



‘I wouldn’t have made it if they were choosing back then by the criteria they use today. Because I was so little I wouldn’t have been picked.’

Fabio Licari, of Gazzetta dello Sport, fears the combination of economic and cultural factors are conspiring at a time when Italy’s national team struggle to identify natural successors to their 2006 World Cup winners.

‘This is not a fantastic moment for Italian football,’ says Licari.



‘We are in a cyclical situation because there’s no generation to follow Buffon, Nesta, Cannavaro, Maldini, Pirlo, Gattuso, Totti, etc. We are slow to turn to young players. It’s a cultural problem. Claudio Marchisio is the best midfielder in Italy, but he is 26 and we still talk about him as a young player. If you are under 24 you are not considered ready for the big teams. Messi and Ronaldo have been playing at the top for years.’



It is a bleak assessment, yet Italian football can be inspired by crisis, taking pride in a mentality which excels in adversity and a tactical ability to grind out results, however ugly. Arsenal and Chelsea will be wary.

The Azzurri won the World Cup in 1982 and 2006 after two corruption scandals and national boss Cesare Prandelli has been applauded for his progress after a miserable defence of the World Cup, in South Africa.

‘I still say Serie A is a good league,’ says Hateley. ‘It’s of a high quality technically and tactically and competitive because it isn’t how it was when Inter were winning every year under (Roberto) Mancini and Mourinho. That competitive edge is driving them on in the Champions League.’

Rise again: Former England and AC Milan striker Mark Hateley believes Serie A can be a force again

There are three Italian teams in the last 16 of the Champions League — more than any other country.

Inter qualified as group winners, Milan came in behind Barcelona and Napoli, back in the competition for the first time since the era of Diego Maradona, advanced at the expense of Premier League leaders Manchester City.

Juventus look dangerous in their quest to restore former glories, without the distraction of European football, as they strike for a 28th Scudetto and a first since 2003.

‘In the 1990s we had the best teams in Europe, probably the world and now is a difficult time,’ adds Zola. We have to learn from the situation and rebuild but I’ve no doubt Italy will be back to its best.