Serie A Change

The rhetoric sounds inevitable, Serie A is set to create its own governing body, using the EPL as its guide, removing its self from Serie B.

Cagliari president, Massimo Cellino stated "The day has arrived. The league is 20 years behind and we cannot lose any more time, Serie A is separating from B."

League president, Antonio Matarrese, made it clear that the move was aimed at solving the continued arguments between Italy's top two divisions by claiming: “Behind this there are projects grander than us like a Super League and the changing of the rules for TV,”

Its an issue that many have been pushing for quite some time. Milan benefactor and current Italian Prime minister has long argued for the schism stating “The great sides should make their own championship. When you invest a lot in a team it's unthinkable to make them play against a team from the provinces whose stadium, usually with a capacity for 20,000 people, is inevitably half-empty. When there are great teams playing the stadiums are always full and TV audiences are massive. Only with great teams can we become protagonists in Europe again.”

In 2003 it was claimed Rupert Murdoch was pushing for a breakaway, one of the key issues being television rights, which were sold by individual clubs, making it difficult for Murdoch's Sky Italia to monopolise broadcast rights. Television rights have caused major problems in many sports, including Rugby League in Australia in the 1990's. Les Murray wrote an article for SBS (in 2003) expressing his belief that Serie A would break away by 2005. He wrote "The name of the game is total independence and autonomy for the country's top league, a self-run business entity with all commercial links with the lower divisions severed." It seems Les' time scale was out by a few years but that ultimately his prediction will prove correct.

I haven't made my mind up as to whether this is a good or bad thing just yet. The main argument against such a move is that it would cripple finance to lower divisions and create an exponentially growing gap between Serie A and the rest. Although this doesn't seem to be the case in England. Clubs like Hull City and West Ham have been able to make the jump quite easily, enjoying instant success of varying degrees once arriving in the top division. In Hull's case, they rose from the bottom division of English football to the EPL in just five years and in their first season have so far claimed the scalps of Fulham, Newcastle, Arsenal and Tottenham and sit in third spot, one win behind joint leaders Chelsea and Liverpool. The success may slow but Hull look certain to remain in the EPL for at least one more season.

Based on this I'm a little skeptical about the idea of a super league creating a great divide, though I'm still concerned the Serie A clubs may take the English model a step or two further to a situation that does create such a divide. I will be eagerly anticipating the developments of this story, perhaps we could see Italian football's finances and popularity surge or the death of lower division football in Italy.