Italian Football ................. not so dead and buried.

Italian football has been much maligned over the last couple of years since Inter won the Champions league in 2010, however it looks like calcio is looking up again. All 3 teams in the Champions League group stage were comfortably through Inter winning their group with a game to spare and Milan coming second to the world's best team and Napoli coming through the group of death (sorry Paul). And both Lazio and Udinese (4th and 3rd in Serie A) still able to qualify in the Europa League group stage too. Also the national team is starting to pick up again too with very comfortable qualification for Euro 2012 plus a win against Spain and a draw with Germany (1 and 3 in the FIFA rankings).

Domestically things are also looking a bit more interesting with real strength in depth in Serie A where the top 10 are only split by 12 points (unlike the Premier League - 22 points and La Liga - 20 points). Additionally the leaders Juventus didn't even qualify for Europe this season! And with a wave of new young players like Manolo Gabbiadini and Lorenzo Insigne, Stephan El Shaarawy and of course Balotelli it's looking good on the youth front with the U-21 team currently 5 wins from 5 in their qualifying group for the U-21 Euros in 2013.

It'll be interesting to see how things pan out for the national team at the Euros and which I can't see any of the Italian teams making the final of the Champions League I'd expect 1 of them to reach the semi-finals. So Italy on the rise again?

Its hard to compare the leagues really since spain is pretty much like the scottish league and england is pretty much a 6 team league. the closeness of Serie is more due to a current lack of outstanding club(s) which the league was previously used to . the weaker teams in italy are'nt too far off the average ones and the better ones are'nt much better than the average ones. its just an opinion but the gap in quality between, for example, tottenham and norwich is far more noticeably wider than the gap between lazio and roma or lazio and parma. yet all four have similar league positions in their respective league. that's not saying Italy is a bad league as it makes it interesting for sure and also it doesnt mean the better teams can't cut it. Napoli have already proven so by disposing of Man City in the champions league. But the league lacks a shining light to rise above the rest, most of the teams are fairly even. its the same in germany at the moment but the difference i think is that German y just about has the edge in terms of the players they are producing. that said, german teams have'nt been that inspring in europe this year so maybe italy will claw back its 3rd best league status if Napoli can see off Chelsea. I think italy has the most clubs represented in the champions league now, correct me if i'm wrong, so its far from being the bad league that many pundits have been crowing on about the past year or so.