How did the opening round of the Champions League play-offs go?

The starting round of the Champions League play-offs threw out all three Italian clubs that reached it from the main European Cup – Napoli, Lazio, and even Inter, which performed well in the national championship but failed to cope with Atlético. The collective failure of the Italian representatives looks like a curious event, since a year ago their results made people talk about a real renaissance of local club football.

The results of the opening round of the Champions League play-offs, which ended on Wednesday, at first glance, look extremely bland. The eight participants in the quarterfinals (the draw for this stage will take place today), formed by him, are entirely clubs with a chic background, expensive applications, each one can easily be imagined as fighting for a big trophy or at least getting close to it. But still, something in this list, devoid of obvious surprises, will most likely hurt the eyes of a person who closely follows everything that happens in continental football and tries to catch any trend. There are three representatives from Spain (Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético), two from England (Manchester City and Arsenal) and Germany (Bayern and Borussia Dortmund), as well as the French PSG, but not a single one from Italy.

A few years ago, this situation might have seemed almost normal, given that Italian football was going through a protracted and multi-layered crisis, expressed in a shortage of both money and talented youth, and sparkled only thanks to Juventus dodging it. But a year ago it seemed that the situation had changed radically. And if the crisis did overtake Juventus, then Italian football as a whole has coped with it and is instead experiencing a real bright renaissance, promising a brilliant present and future.

The Eurocups described it perfectly. Italian teams made it to all three finals. True, they all lost (Roma lost to Sevilla in the Europa League, Fiorentina to West Ham in the Conference League, and Inter to Manchester City in the Champions League), but in any case, their effectiveness I mean, it was fantastic. This renaissance was especially evident in the main European Cup. The Italian quartet lost to Juventus in the group stage, but all three clubs that overcame it – Inter, Milan and Napoli – made it through to the 1/8 finals. The two Milanese fought each other in the semi-finals. And in the Istanbul final, Inter, ranked much lower than Manchester City, which looked invulnerable at that moment, resisted desperately and lost to the opponent due to the only goal missed in the second half from Rodri.

Now things have turned out much worse for the Italian brigade. Now in the group round she said goodbye to Milan, and in the 1/8 finals with her opponents – Bayern, Barcelona and Atlético – Lazio, Napoli and Inter failed. Considering the context, this sounds an awful lot like a complete failure, a complete disaster that requires an explanation. But, of course, there are no unambiguous ones, since different versions sound equally convincing.

Let’s say, the version that everything is to blame for some monstrously unlucky combination of circumstances and factors for Italian clubs. Milan managed to end up in the “group of death” with Borussia, PSG and Newcastle, and it dropped the Parisians to second place, scoring equal points with them. Napoli, so great in the previous season, was lucky to retain all of its leaders, but was unlucky with coach Luciano Spalletti, who was intercepted by the Italian national team, on whose energy, as it turned out, everything depended. Without Spalletti, the Neapolitans collapsed. Lazio also had a coaching problem: signs that Maurizio Sarri, previously bursting with ideas, had run out of steam, appeared quite a long time ago, and before the clash with Bayern they became so obvious that soon after the crushing 0:3 loss in the return match Sarri was fired.

Finally, last year’s finalist Inter, which in the current Italian Championship is about as good as Napoli, which preceded it, was not lucky with its play-off opponent, who was designed precisely to make the strong suffer. And besides, everything in this confrontation was subtle. Inter, which won the home match, took the lead in the away match, then, having conceded, it was 1:1 until the last minutes and the saving goal for Atlético by Memphis Depay, and withdrew after a protracted penalty shootout.

That is, a catastrophe, albeit loud, but rather momentary, local. But this is only if we forget about the version that some wise experts who urged not to rush to conclusions about the longevity of the Italian Renaissance, for example those working at the BBC, prepared at its peak last year. For any football breakthrough to be sustainable, it needs huge financial support. These are today’s realities, from which there is no escape. And here is the Transfermarkt rating for clubs’ spending on newcomers during the current season, two transfer windows, summer 2023 and winter 2024, directly related to the Champions League: the first Italian club, Napoli, is found in it in 18th position, the next — “Milan” is in 20th place, third — “Inter” is in the tail of the fourth ten. And his certainly great acquisitions during this period – Jan Sommer, Benjamin Pavard, Marcus Thuram – are side by side with the losses of core players – Milan Skriniar, Marcelo Brozovic, Andre Onana. An approach that is not very reminiscent of the one that certainly leads to the conquest of the most prestigious football peaks.

Alexey Dospehov