'Magnificent Seven' Ready to Fight for Serie A Title
Copyright � 1999 Nando Media
Copyright � 1999 Agence France-Presse
MILAN, Italy (August 24, 1999 9:46 a.m. EDT http://www.sportserver.com) - All eyes will be on the "Magnificent Seven" this weekend - when the stars of Italy's Serie A begin potentially the toughest season in the history of
the league.
No fewer than seven clubs, nearly half the Serie A, have a real chance of winning the coveted title after a record-breaking re-shuffle of the top players - particularly where it counts, in front of goal.
Traditionally, the title is destined for Turin or Milan. This time,
champions AC Milan, Inter, Lazio, AS Roma, Juventus, Parma and Fiorentina all have a legitimate claim to the championship.
The money which has been pumped into clubs in recent years by their multi-millionaire owners, for whom a football team is petty cash within a vast business empire, plus the advent of satellite television rights, has transformed the staid landscape of Italian soccer.
Today, the stories that dominate Italy's sports pages have one thing in common -- money; the world record $50-million fee paid by Inter for Lazio's Christian Vieri, the record $5.5-million net salary wrung from Juventus by Alessandro Del Piero and the fruitless haggling over tens of millions of dollars by Lazio and Juventus for Arsenal's Nicolas Anelka.
Italian clubs have come into money and now they are spending it.
As a result, a rags-to-riches club like Parma, which only arrived in the Serie A in 1990 after decades in the wilderness of lower division soccer, have a team which, on paper, is second to none.
Backed by the Tanzi family's Parmalat milk empire, the team which won last season's UEFA and Italian Cups is ready for a serious title challenge after paying Udinese more than $40 million for two players: Brazilian Marcio Amoroso and Ghana's Stephen Appiah.
Vieri, meanwhile, represents less than half of Inter's off-season spending as it rebuilt the team for new coach Marcello Lippi - the man who made Italian, European and world champions out of Juventus.
At Inter, both optimism and money are in unlimited supply thanks to the deep pockets of the club's backers, oil refinery tycoon Massimo Moratti and tire manufacturers Pirelli.
Loyal fans have also invested in Moratti's Dream Team by queuing up to buy season tickets. The San Siro club expects to at least match last season's record sales figure of nearly 60,000.
The council-owned stadium's other tenants, AC Milan, is also expecting a bumper harvest from the fans after unexpectedly following two years of misery with the club's 16th league title.
The club president, TV tycoon and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who admits he didn't splash out on Ronaldo two years ago for fear of damaging his public image, has again been careful in his spending.
The club, celebrating the 100th year since its founding by a nostalgic English ex-pat as the "Milan Cricket and Football Club", has also bucked the popular trend by buying Italian instead of foreign.
Seven of its nine signings this summer were home-grown after Milan found out the hard way that too many players trying to integrate into a new country, culture, football and language causes trouble.
Juventus will, meanwhile, be hoping that Del Piero continues his successful return from knee surgery and takes the club back to the top after probably the worst season in its illustrious history.
Juventus finished only sixth in the table, saw its coach resign and was unbelievably dumped out of the European Cup semifinals by Manchester United after leading 2-0 in front of its home fans.
"The Old Lady", as the club is known in Italy, was not amused.
Fiorentina, owned by TV and movie mogul Vittorio Cecchi Gori, will once again put its faith in skipper and top goalscorer Gabriel Batistuta, as it has done for each of the last eight years.
During that time, all Fiorentina have ever won is the Italian Cup, which here is considered something of a booby prize. Now 'Batigol' has a first-class team around him and a profound desire to finally win big.
Down in Rome, both clubs fancy their chances - Lazio, owned by tomato sauce baron Sergio Cragnotti, because it came so close last time around, and AS Roma because it now has a tough, world-class coach in Fabio Capello, once the much-feared taskmaster at AC Milan.
All seven teams are certainly magnificent on paper. With the possible exception of Lazio, each one has an attacking trident which club chairmen elsewhere in Europe would kill for.
However, only one of them is going to win the "scudetto" and - as happened last season - the key will probably not be in the boots, but in the brains of the winning team; which team has the mental strength needed to cope with the intense pressure in the final weeks?
Lazio cracked last season, as did title rivals Parma. AC Milan clung to their old guard of Paolo Maldini, Alessandro Costacurta and Demetrio Albertini and weathered the storm, winning the championship on a dramatic final day.
More than ever before, the coming Italian season will be a demanding test of courage, as much as class. And the winner will certainly need to be magnificent at both.
