If we don’t intervene in time, the crisis in Italian football will continue unabated, warns Milan president

The Italian national team will not take part in the upcoming World Cup after winning the Euro, but the whole of Italian football is going through a crisis, according to AC Milan president Paolo Scaroni. In an interview with Il Foglio, he hit out at Serie A, which he said is not up to the quality of rival European leagues.

“Our Serie A has become Serie B compared to the other big European leagues. The crisis of Italian football is serious. All or almost all the big European leagues have overtaken us, if we continue in this way we will continue to fall behind them,” the AC Milan president told Italian daily Il Foglio

He subsequently described Serie A as a second-tier competition and urged referees to try to keep the ball in play for as long as possible to get a greater percentage of net game time. “In February, Milan’s match with Udinese ended with 48 minutes and 36 seconds of actual game time out of 97 minutes. It’s boring like that, the referees should play their part.”

He suggested upgrading stadiums, which he said need modernisation, as another way to stop the crisis. His AC Milan, along with city rival Inter, are currently facing the construction of a new stadium, which should rise next to where the famous San Siro currently stands.

The new stadium is planned to be one of the most beautiful stadiums in the world, but will have a much smaller capacity than the original one.

However, he then said that he was aware that building a stadium in Italy was too complicated a process. There are a lot of permits and approvals needed for the construction, but also a local referendum, which in the case of Milan will take a whole year. But according to Football Italia, he is positive about the upcoming redevelopment.

Paolo Scaroni has been the club’s president since 2018 and celebrated his first championship title with the club this year, having previously served as a member of the club’s supervisory board.

Source: Il Foglio, Football Italia