Poor Showing In Europe This Week Further Shows Serie A Is In Decline

In what was termed one of the biggest matches of the game week, it turned out to be a simple walk away for the German champions, Bayern Munich in Rome. It was recently disclosed that Pep Guardiola is not interested in ‘tiki-taka style of football’ without forward pressing against his opponents. The Bayern team did well to show this by demolishing AS Roma at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome. Very few will see this coming but Bayern’s performance definitely shows how good the team is and they might as well be one of the favourites for this year’s UEFA Champions League. In a group with top teams from four different leagues, Bayern Munich seems to be holding their own and their five star performances against the Italians must be commended.

Bayern played without Thiago Alcantara, Schweinsteiger and some other key players but they did enough to get the needed three points. Arjen Robben showed once more he is far from losing his quality as the Dutchman was a major thorn in Roma’s flesh. Winning 7-1 is outrageous but scoring five in the first 36 minutes against a team like Roma is out of this world.

Napoli failed to make it to the group stage of this year’s campaign leaving only AS Roma and Juventus as Italian representatives. Despite dominance of these two teams in their league, they have failed to show their strength in Europe. A nightmare result for AS Roma supported by another 1-0 loss of Juventus to Olympiacos sums it all up for the two Italian teams in Europe this year. Juventus has struggled to make an impact in Europe in recent years and they remain 3 points behind the first two teams in their group. Juventus surprisingly got eliminated in the group stage last time out and are yet to convince the football world about their European ambition although the Serie A champions will hope to make it through this time around under new boss, Massimiliano Allegri. Surely a week to forget for the Italian teams as only Fiorentina got a win away even as they struggle to win 1-0 away at PAOK Thessaloniki. Napoli with the quality of the players in their squad couldn’t do anything as they succumbed to a 2-0 loss to Young Boys. Inter Milan however only play out a goalless draw against French club, Saint Etienne at the San Siro. Inter Milan, Fiorentina and Napoli are involved in the UEFA Europa league and will hope to help in re-writing Seria A history in Europe.

This week’s results clearly showed there is still lot of work to be done for the Italian clubs to return back to been the best in Europe. This may take quite some time with Bayern, Real Madrid and Barcelona all flexing their financial muscles. The result may have come as a surprise to many but this out rightly shows the quality of Italian Serie A, the standard has dropped in recent years.