Serie A thread

I was at 4 of the stadia in Italia 90 and the Luigi Ferraris was my favourite. But it and Bari were the only 2 stadia (of 12) purpose-built for the tournament. And never mind that it is now over 30 years old, stadium design in the late 1980s was so far inferior to what we have now that even in mint condition, it wouldn't really compare to the best of modern stadia.

And as for the others, they were only refurbs/expansions of stadia which were then pretty average and almost all municiapally owned, meaning many were multi-purpose with athletics tracks etc.

While since 1990, I think only two major clubs have built a new, football-only stadium of their own, Juve and Sassuolo, with only one(?) other Serie A club owning their own, older stadium. Worse, Juve's new stadium "only" holds 41.5k spectators, somewhat lower than the capacity of other comparable big European rivals and presumably contributing to their current financial difficulties, rather than solving them.

Apparently, this is all a legacy of Italia 90, where everything went wrong from the start, including an 86% overspend on the stadium budget:

And with so many other countries charging ahead in building new, revenue-generating stadia, Italian football/Serie A is liable to fall even further back from its glory days a quarter of a century ago.

UEFA originally decided to expand the CL to 36 teams (from 32) and play a Round Robin format (to guarantee each entrant more games), in the hope that this would head off the ESL. This was to take effect from 2024/25.

Two of the additional teams would continue to qualify by the normal route, but another two were to be selected  from those teams which hadnt qualified by the usuall means but which had the best CL record over the previous  five years.

Due to protests from other clubs etc, also the struggle of the ESL to get off the ground, UEFA has dropped this backdoor entry for two clubs - all four addotional slots will need to be filled by the usual means.

More here: https://www.espn.co.uk/football/uefa-champions-league/story/4663021/champions-league-revamp-how-the-competition-will-work-from-2024-25

By the way, even if UEFA had kept the proposed new system, Juve wouldnt have been close to availing of it, since their recent CL record, like all Italian clubs, has been pretty dismal. Rather, it would most likely have been a Spanish and an English club which benefited, though most unusually, had it been applied for next season, it would have been an Englsih and a Dutch team.