𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

The shock value is notable.

The Serie A champions not making it through the Champions League league phase. The current league leaders by 10 points going out to Bodo/Glimt. Two teams exiting in the play-off round this season. Three last season.

Headlines calling it a “disaster”. Talk show hosts making sensationalist claims about Bodo/Glimt’s payroll being the equivalent of Catania, Salernitana, Vicenza and Benevento’s in Italy’s third division. The sheer embarrassment of it.

A country’s anxieties stoked ahead of the national team’s own play-off against Northern Ireland next month, when the risk of missing out on another World Cup, the third in a row, hangs heavy once again.

It is, as they say on the continent, a bad moment. Italian football was hastily declared dead on Tuesday, then alive again on Wednesday.

So is Serie A really that bad? Dive deeper below.