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Good Friday of Italian football

Good Friday of Italian football

  • Emanuele Giulianelli, @EmaGiulianelli
The home defeat suffered by Napoli against Arsenal ratified the definitive elimination of the Italian clubs from the European cups. The last time when the semifinals of both Champions and Europa League were played without Italian sides was in 2015-16.

It's a clear sign: we have spent a whole summer and the big part of the season hearing ourselves talk about how our movement was growing up and how we had gained again the past appeal, showing as proof the purchase of Ronaldo by Juventus.

But CR7 couldn't be the solution to all the atavic problems of Serie A clubs and of the movement in general. Actually, if we want to tell the truth as now the evidence shows, Ronaldo has been even counter-productive, in the sense that he has been used as a fig-leaf, especially for Juventus.

With the arrival of one of the two best players in the world, every club felt to be justified not to solve their problems of competitiveness. The mental process was really simple: if our Serie A has been able to attract the top star of CR7, our clubs have now solved their problems and we are back again to the Golden Age of the Italian football.

Simple, silly thinking. Ronaldo should have been the groundwork to start from, the point of start, not the arrival. Juventus have covered their poor idea of playing, the consequence of a less and less competitive Serie A that doesn't push them to improve their football, with the purchase of a star paid an amount of money out of the market for the Italian football.

And the consequences have been clear against Ajax, where a clear style and idea of playing football has overshadowed the brightness of a lonely star. The problems of Napoli are, in many ways, similar to the Juventus ones. Their Cristiano Ronaldo has the name of Carlo Ancelotti.

The same eleven of the last year, without Jorginho, without any important investment in the transfer market. The top manager has been used by De Laurentiis to hide the really poor money spent to improve a side that, year after year, is competitive only on the paper and in the words of the president. The Good Friday of Italian football, the Friday of passion. But I don't think that three days will be enough for the resurrection.