The Fall of Italy's Giants: Serie A Is Running Out of Excuses
Updated March 12, 2026
Updated March 12, 2026
With only Atalanta still standing in the Champions League last 16, it is no longer hyperbole to say that Italian football is in crisis.
There was something fitting, in the cruelest possible way, about the scene at San Siro when Inter Milan were knocked out of Europe. As the crowd filed into the iconic stadium on a cold Milan night, the club piped in a tribute to Ronaldo Nazario and Christian Vieri, two of the club's greatest ever forwards. Men who had lifted the Champions Cup, who had made Serie A the gravitational center of world soccer. The contrast was hard to ignore. The teams of Ronaldo and Vieri could not just win domestically; they went to Europe and left a mark. They then watched on in the stands as the once mighty Inter crashed out of the Champions League to Norwegian minnows Bodo/Glimt.
There have been mutterings for as long as a decade that Italian football is in decline. The Italian National Team hasn't played in a World Cup since 2014. Inter, despite making a rousing run to the Champions League Final last season, were crushed 5-0 by PSG on the biggest stage. The Serie A of the 90s is a distant memory. The world's best players see it as a stepping stone to the Premier League, not a league at the pinnacle of world soccer. Italian football appears to be in crisis, and the numbers back up that theory.
Seven Italian clubs entered European competition this season. Here is where they all stand.
Club | Competition | European Fate |
|---|---|---|
Inter Milan | UCL | Eliminated: Round of 16 playoffs |
Juventus | UCL | Eliminated: lost 7–5 agg. to Galatasaray |
Napoli | UCL | Failed to progress from league phase |
Atalanta | UCL | Last 16: Italy's sole survivor (lost first leg 6-1 to Bayern) |
Roma | UEL | Last 16: Still active |
Bologna | UEL | Last 16: Still active |
Fiorentina | UECL | Last 16: Required play-off to advance |
Three of Italy's four Champions League entrants are already home. The final survivors, Atalanta, were just unceremoniously slaughtered 6-1 by Bayern Munich at home, leaving them all but eliminated as well. If it wasn't for Inter punching significantly above their weight under Simeone Inzaghi, Italy would not have seen any involvement in the latter stages of the Champion League since the Juventus of Mandzukic, Chiellini and Buffon reached the final in 2016.
There was once a time when the biggest clubs in Serie A were considered the biggest in the world. Milan boasted a squad containing Pirlo, Kaka, Inzaghi, Crespo and Shevchenko. Juventus could rely upon Chiellni, Barzagli and Buffon to keep clean sheets while Del Piero, Trezeguet or Mandzukic put opponents to the sword.
But these squads of superstars are now a distant memory, and while Inter, Milan and Juventus in particular still boast big brand name appeal, they can no longer compete with the wages and transfer fees commanded by the best in the game. The single largest fee paid for a player by a Serie A club last summer was the €42 million ($49m) Milan sent to Chelsea for Christopher Nkunku, a number surpassed by 10 Premier League clubs last summer alone. Meanwhile Liverpool were spending €150 million ($173m) on Alexander Isak, and Bayern were spending €75 million ($86m) on Luis Diaz. When teams cannot compete in the market, it is little wonder they start to fall behind, especially when the pipeline of local talent seems to be drying up.
Transfer budgets alone do not explain the scale of the problem. Italian football is also failing to produce talent at the rate it once did.
Between 2020 and 2025, Italy produced just 413 football exports, ranking 24th in the world, behind the United States, Japan and Russia. England produced over 1,000 in the same period. Only one capped Italy international under the age of 24 is currently playing regular Serie A minutes.
These are not abstract statistics. They translate directly to what coaches have available on a Saturday night in Turin or Milan. The squads that go deep in Europe are, almost without exception, built on a core of elite homegrown players supplemented by smart recruitment. Italy no longer has a reliable version of either.
It would be tempting to treat the national team's struggles as a separate issue . A coaching problem, a tactical problem, a bad run of qualifying results. But Italy now face a World Cup playoff to avoid a third absence from a tournament they have won four times. The Azzurri and Serie A's European clubs are not two different stories. They are the same story, told from slightly different angles, arriving at the same destination.
Atalanta deserve enormous credit for still being in the competition. A 98th-minute Samardzic penalty securing their place in the last 16 in circumstances that felt, frankly, cinematic. But it would be a mistake to let their resilience obscure the broader picture. Atalanta's run of sustained European progress was built across an exceptional decade under Gian Piero Gasperini, a coach who has since moved to Roma. Their model is admirable, but it is not replicable at scale, and it cannot carry the credibility of an entire league. Furthermore, despite this steady growth over a decade, the club remains a long way behind Europe's elite, as illustrated by their humiliation at the hands of Bayern.
Domestically, Serie A remains a genuinely watchable competition. Inter lead the table, Milan are chasing hard after last weekend's derby triumph, and this week's fixtures, including the Lazio vs Milan clash on Sunday, will be closely contested. The league produces drama. It produces character. It still produces the occasional genius.
But competitiveness at home has become a curtain behind which the structural decay continues. The question Serie A's clubs, administrators and investors must answer is not who will win the Scudetto in May. It is whether Italian football has the financial architecture, the academy depth and the collective ambition to one day produce a club capable of lifting the trophy in the Champions League final. Right now it seems further away than ever.
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