Because their players are largely on the downward trend from their peak or are players who can fulfil a role within their system whereas a good proportion of ours are on their way towards what their peak could be. Down to who their manager was before Inzaghi and also Marotta.
If you did a combined 11 then I would believe we would have at least 4 of the 11. IMO Tek, Cuadrado, Chiesa, Dybala and there’s a possible debate for De Ligt and Locatelli.
They don’t possess many players who I’d say are a big step above what we currently have in terms of ability and mentality (to my mind I can only think of Barella who would be in that category).
Ours are not on downward trend? We have 35 and 37 year old CBs, and Alex Sandro is playing like he’s 45. Cuadrado is not getting any younger either.
You said 4 and you named 3 only, but let’s go over that. I have no issue with Chiesa and Cuadrado. I’d take Latauro over Dybala, and Argentina NT coaches seem to think the same.
Locatelli is good but not better than Barella. De Ligt is great, but De Vrij is better (he’s the starter in Dutch NT). Tek might be somewhat better than Handanovic but both of them make stupid mistakes. Also Handa probably won’t start next season while Tek will be here for a while.
At the end of the day it’s all subjective, but I tried to put some reasoning behind my opinion.
Edit: I’m not saying they miles better like City or Liverpool, but they ARE better. When we started our winning cycle we were only slightly better than Milan, but we built on it and they self destructed. Pretty much all downfalls happen the same way.