ROMA – “Serie A is in crisis, the Italian championship is destined to become a secondary tournament, less and less money is spinning”. How many times in recent years have we heard these considerations, a sad and bleak de profundis for Serie A, unable to stand up to comparison – it was said – with the petrodollars that inflate football in half of Europe and the investments of Russian oligarchs and American multinationals? 

Not to mention the crisis caused by Covid, which has brought a very high bill also in the Italian championship, empty stadiums and chasms in the budgets of the companies, forced to invent accounting alchemies and sleight of hand in negotiations – between loans, right of redemption and counter-return, purchase obligation linked only to the achievement of certain sports results and so on – in order to arrive with a budget year in order.

The reality, however, is very different from how it was painted and the confirmation comes from a report published today by OLGB in which the salaries of the players of the first divisions of the main countries are examined.

According to the results of this study, Serie A is second only to the English Premier League in the total remuneration of registered players, far surpassing also the Spanish La Liga, the German Bundesliga and ligue 1 French.

According to the OLGB report, the total salaries of Premier League players is about 2.3 billion dollars, while in Serie A the total number of signings is close to 1.7 billion. La Liga is on the podium, with 1.45 billion, followed by the Bundesliga at 1.12 billion and Ligue 1, which stands at 856 million dollars.

In the English premier there are numerous teams that guarantee monstrous salaries to the players: Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Tottenham, Arsenal are only the tip of the iceberg, given that even mid-table teams – such as Everton, West Ham, Leicester – can afford pharaonic engagements.

In Serie A we find numerous companies that, albeit in the generalized crisis, guarantee signings of a certain weight: Juve, Milan, Inter, Roma, Lazio, Napoli but also Atalanta and Fiorentina. In Spain there are only three super spendthrift teams: Real, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid. Separate cases are France and Germany: here we find two teams that spend without limits – Messi’s PSG and Bayern Munich – while all the other formations are attentive to budgets.

As for salaries, a Serie A player earns an average of 842 thousand dollars a year, a figure that rises to 1.6 million in the Premier League.

Of course, we are light years away from the Nineties, when Serie A bestowed stratospheric engagements and Italian teams dominated in all European competitions. At the same time, however, other elements must be taken into account. Football, understood as a movement as a whole, continues to grow in the Belpaese.

The triumph at the European Championship will act as a driving force for new investments, while the willingness of the main Italian clubs to focus on the youth sectors and italian talents seems to be generalized: a recipe that could lead to the relaunch of Serie A and its main teams, ready to compete once again in the Champions League and in the Europa League.