So I'm probs the biggest anglophobe on this forum, but I'd definitely say that while the oil money has accelerated the gap between the EPL, it was already in a position to attract that investment. Nice stadiums, teams and competitions with history, world-class media packaging and a desire to uphold the historical ties while also being unafraid to innovate and push the envelope. The advantage of English's status as the defacto lingua franca doubtless helped them as well.
Serie A had just one of these factors at the turn of the millenium - the history. Maybe two if we consider in that context the stadiums weren't SO terrible. And we were attracting oil money - I'm sure the Tamoil deal was a world record at the time.
Without 2006 it's possible Serie A would have been able to compete with EPL better than La Liga but EPL would still have won out. The conservative mindset of Serie A would have dragged us down inevitably - from the snail's progress in modernising the stadiums and media packaging to Milan and Inter not rejuvenating their squads after their CL victories. That plus 2006 sealed the deal. Tamoil was 2004- at which point Serie A could have kept pace with EPL but even by 2011 the gap was enormous. The balance of top players in EPL vs Serie A had completely changed. Often moving directly a la Shevchenko- and then Milan failing to see the bigger picture and invest that income accordingly.
Serie A had just one of these factors at the turn of the millenium - the history. Maybe two if we consider in that context the stadiums weren't SO terrible. And we were attracting oil money - I'm sure the Tamoil deal was a world record at the time.
Without 2006 it's possible Serie A would have been able to compete with EPL better than La Liga but EPL would still have won out. The conservative mindset of Serie A would have dragged us down inevitably - from the snail's progress in modernising the stadiums and media packaging to Milan and Inter not rejuvenating their squads after their CL victories. That plus 2006 sealed the deal. Tamoil was 2004- at which point Serie A could have kept pace with EPL but even by 2011 the gap was enormous. The balance of top players in EPL vs Serie A had completely changed. Often moving directly a la Shevchenko- and then Milan failing to see the bigger picture and invest that income accordingly.
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