Milan chairman Paolo Scaroni has criticised Serie A for being too far behind their rival European leagues, blaming the stadium and lack of actual football played.

Scaroni claims the gap between Italy’s top flight and their European counterparts is only going to grow wider unless something is done soon to improve the situation.

He labelled Serie A a second-tier competition in Europe and urged referees to play their part to ensure the ball is in play for a larger part of the 90 minutes.

In an interview with Il Foglio, he said: “Our Serie A has become a Serie B in comparison with other top European leagues. They have all more or less overtaken us in the past 20 years.

“The result is that the product we offer isn’t great, without the [Lionel] Messis a the [Kylian] Mbappes, simply because we can’t allow ourselves.

“If we continue in this way, we will keep on moving further away from the football elite.”

Scaroni suggested one serious area in need of modernising was the stadiums. He added: “We need to present a product which people enjoy.

“Football is a sport but it is also a spectacle. A spectacle which requires a nice stadium which is well lit, always full of fans, modern, not too big, not too small.”

He said, however, that attempting to improve a stadium is a difficult ask in Italy and that Milan are ready to snap up the first available location for the creation of a new stadium.

He said: “Creating infrastructure in Italy is a serious problem. Now there will be the local referendum which will take a year. Do you understand? You know all of the approvals, the agreements and even the local referendum.”

However, he added he was positive: “We will take the first one to give us the go-ahead. In terms of the location for San Siro I’m quite optimistic.”

Scaroni called on referees to use their influence, suggesting not enough actual football is played. He said: “The spectacle needs to be made up of a lot of game-time and little interruption.

“In February, Milan-Udinese finished with 48 mins. 38 secs. of actual match time from 97 total minutes. It’s boring like this. The referees need to play their part.”

23 thought on “Milan chief Scaroni slams ‘boring’ Serie A: It’s Serie B among European leagues”
  1. hes right too many average foreigners playing instead of italians our league was the best when only 3 foreigners were allowed teams were scared to face italian clubs not any more

  2. New stadiums will take time but referees deffo need to be given more modern instructions on how to officiate.

    Hoping more foreign investment into Serie a from American owners who will build modern stadiums in the future

  3. Serie A has not been a football exclusive for a long time but it is not exactly a league that is not monitored or that players do not want to come to. The English Premier League is now far apart from other European leagues but primarily because of the huge foreign capital entering football. Why do they come to England and not Italy, the real question is !? I consider the Spanish league to be media dependent on only two clubs, and the Bundesliga has been completely suffocated by Bayern !

  4. Have to agree with him but the problem as Wasp points out is also elsewhere. Yes, the spectacle may be better but even the EPL is a two team league… When 3rd place is 20 points adrift, you know the league is unbalanced. Italian systems are very slow to adapt and only Juventus managed to get there properly with their stadium. It’s ludicrous that Milan doesn’t own theirs. So much red tape.

  5. If you compare Salah’s performances for Roma and Fiorentina, and Liverpool, or Ronaldo’s performances for Juve v his previous clubs, it shows that even players at that level don’t perform at the same level in Serie A. And it’s not because our defences are better because those same players performed in Europe whilst Italian teams struggled.

  6. Milan for a few years now have played with 3 upfront but we’re never been prepared to go all out and play three out and out attackers. A Messi-Suarez-Neymar. It doesn’t have to be at that level. But the idea of three attackers. In other leagues Rebic-Leao-Giroud would play if fit. We need a slightly defensive RW. It’s little things like that.

  7. Physically we seem to be behind as well. Again this has nothing to do with money. It’s about coaching. Sure the best coaches are currently in the premier league due to the money. Guardiola and Klopp are the two best coaches in the world. If the coached any of the top Serie A teams they would all raise their levels without the need to sign a single player. But it shows the power of coaching.

  8. I keep saying it. Managers make the biggest difference. There’s so many examples of almost the exact same teams performing at a completely different level under a different coach. Pioli has made a huge difference at
    Milan. But there’s better still. Blame the refs and stadiums all you like but coaching is key.

  9. A league that is too scared to develop home grown youth, have no money but waste the money they do have on foreign players that no one has ever heard of, get past it players on a free transfer then call them “fenomeni” year after year the same errors take place and the club owners then wonder why the clubs win nothing in europe… my word how brain dead are these owners. too many fans in italy have accepted mediocrity also, all i see everyday is news about lukaku and dybala and people think these players are going to make our football good? absolute joke, when the foreign players actually make our league look good and help move italian football on ill be quiet but they really dont and never will, there needs to be a mix of italian players and foreign players and not just an influx of foreign players just for the sake of it, years ago our league had a good balance and the foreign players in serie a were actually good, if serie A can no longer get the best foreign players then start developing the youth, i know this takes time but its a positive step in the right direction and will move us on in the long run, people like Carnesecchi are good enough for lazio for example, Scamacca can become much better at milan and so can Raspadori and players like that ect ect, it really is time for italy to wake up or we really dont have a future

  10. Unfortunately he is right especially regarding with the lack of gameplay.
    Also the much slower pace and bad mentality cause big differences.
    However Friedkin’s Roma is a great example how to develop a competitive club, hopefully they will show a succesful example to all of the others

  11. As someone who has been watching Serie A since the 80s I can definitely tell you that almost all of the problems come down to stadiums. Having said that however, it doesn’t help that on a daily basis people in high places like Scaroni are constantly talking about how crap the league is .

  12. Some valid points, but some strange points in there too. Have people really enjoyed watching PSG in a league that’s generally uncompetitive more than Milan this season, purely because they have some famous names? Messi is a great player, but he hasn’t shown much of that talent this season.

  13. Yes Scaroni, and you allowing transfers such as Origi Giroud and 40 year old Ibra is really helping the league to improve among Europe

  14. Italy is a banana republic, and I blame the politicians for not letting the clubs build stadiums. Shame on them.

  15. Mikkel you hit the jackpot…..Italy doesn’t want to change its system. They would have done it along time ago.

  16. Regarding the playing time, it’s simple: no fouls given just because a player was touched somewhere – ESPECIALLY if they play act well beyond the effect that illegal touch makes on the body. And SERIOUS punishment for anyone retroactively found to be diving – including letting oneself fall when they feel a slight nudge in the back to win a free kick.

    All of this includes Milan players, no hypocrisy.

  17. Unfortunately he’s absolutely spot on! The stadiums and the stop start play in Serie a is all too Apparent, there is no flow to the game at all

  18. They have lost their self confidence and think have to copy every thing that saxons are to be sucessful. Not long ago english football was a boring departed league and it was italy at the top. Take out the oil and oligarch money and leave them to play with their own in tiny liliputh stadiums they have and see what happens.

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