The sorry state of Italian football ....
Aug 30, 2026
Italy Serie A: Cagliari- Internazionale
Italian football is in a pretty sorry state .The national team failed to qualify for the World Cup finals for the third straight time after only missing out once previously and that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago, but since that win in 2006, they have won just one WC game at the finals. No club side made it beyond the quarter finals of any of the three European competitions and we had the lowest scoring Serie A season of the Millenium. Games averaged 2.42 goals and they have been pretty much on decline since peaking in 19/20 ( 3.03) and 20/21 (3.06). There have been too many old players (which we have discussed in the past) and head coaches who learned their trade two generations ago and who are stuck in the past, seemingly modern football has passed them all by. I do think that they are trying to address this, but there are also too many foreign players, looking at the squads this morning, four teams have between 26-30 overseas players which is insane! These are not global stars and where once they had them all, they have not had a single one since Cristiano Ronaldo left in 2021 and he was 36yo at the time. No clubs in La Liga or the Bundesliga have anything approaching that number of foreign players, in the EPL there are two with that many, but one is Chelsea who have a massive group and in Ligue 1 just one club and that is Strasbourg (owned by BlueCo/Chelsea and again with the biggest squad). So, basically just Chelsea (INC) and Brighton, who have very different recruitment models to almost every other club.
Anyway, games in Italy have become increasingly hard to watch for non domestic football fans, lacking in entertainment and its international television rights make up only 20% of broadcasting revenues, in La Liga it is 44% and in the EPL 48%. The world wants to watch the big names and competitive, exciting matches.
This all has to change and that is not going to happen by a return to catenaccio. I hope and feel that Italy has had a final wake up call and expect that games will be more open and surely an upturn in goals as a starting point.
This fixture in Sardinia is the late televised game and I am hoping for goals and to learn something, especially with regard to the home side, but maybe about the visitors too. We suspect that Inter are strong and they made a great start in their title defence with a 4-1 defeat of Monza last weekend. However, Monza "won" BC's 3-2 and xG was very close, but Inter do look full of goals.
The hosts have some stability at the helm with Fabio Pisacane in his second season as head coach (the only one of the last ten to remain longer than one year). He knows the club well, had great success with the Primavera and aside from one year with Lecce, he has spent the last 11 years at Cagliari as player and on the coaching staff. He is in charge of the third youngest team in Serie A , which makes sense, given his background with young players, they opened with a win at Parma last week and hopefully the coach and players will be given time to blossom. I am not sure what they can expect from today, Inter have dominated the series and have won on 9 of 10 visits to the island, but have conceded in seven and the hosts are under less pressure today, now that they have three points on board.
I like both teams to score (2.09) and nothing really wrong with the quote, we can push that up by either adding the 3+ goal option ( 2.63) or with Inter to win (3.61) and TBH, I would be happy/ok with any of the three. I think I will stick with what worked in the Serie A game last week, so.... 2.25 units both teams to score and "over" 2.5 goals @ 2.63 asian line.
Good luck!
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