Yes, lovely post.
I think after the English league, the Italian is by far the most interesting - historically speaking. There are no more than 3 great clubs in Spain for example, 3 in Holland, 3 in Portugal, and just 2 in Germany. France doesn't rate at all. But Italy has produced many great clubs, as well as teams. There hasn't been nearly as many league champions as there are in England (something like 25), but there have been quite a few.
From the outside however it appears to have been in slow decline for a while now. The crowds dwindled away, then the great players, then the European success.
The crowds thing is also related to Tessera del Tifoso (
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=it&tl=en&u=https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessera_del_tifoso) which is a supporter ID card that made it a lot more difficult to attend football matches in the wake of the death of a police officer in Catania from a grenade in 2007. A lot of supporter clubs decided to boycott games once it was introduced and that further dwindled the stands.
One further problem Italian clubs have been facing is that due to the 00's hooliganism only the ultras remained because it became a hostile environment for casual fans who found it a lot more comfortable to watch the games on the TV instead. The issue there is that the ultras are often made up of social and political extremists of either persuation. Several clubs like Cagliari, Lazio and Verona have these problems where local neo-fascists have hijacked the stands which has resulted in horrific scenes of racial abuse towards players and further pushed normal people away from attending. We also shouldn't forget the Livorno ultras' annual Stalin banners on his birthdays which are very untasteful as well.
It's been a vicious cycle for many years because if there's one thing Italian clubs need to help eliminate racism in their stands is that normal people attend games in place of those ultras groups. Then said racist thugs hide inside the crowds, making them hard to spot and thus the clubs have to work very hard to get them out. In turn, that also means black players are less likely to choose an Italian club over English ones (Demba Ba spoke about it publicly) and that further pushes the level of the league down. Back in 2001 Inter were desperate to sign Sol Campbell but he turned it down over the racial abuse black players tended to receive and sadly it's not gotten much better since.
So, in many ways, the horrendous racism in the stands and the inability to fight it off has definitely also contributed to the decline of Italian football. Hopefully this young TikTok star that's doing the rounds (like 110 million followers?) now will help Italian society to be more tolerant towards people of colour but it remains to be seen. Sadly, Balotelli not succeeding was a missed opportunity for Italian football in general. Had he become one of the Italian greats he could've had a tremendous impact and helped social change in that sense. Had he fulfilled the potential he had back in his teenage years and been the best striker in the world for a decade I don't think there would've been scenes like there still are in the Italian grandstands. Which is such a shame
The even greater tragedy is that it would take a footballer succeeding for a footballing culture to realise racism is never okay. Sadly, I don't think there's any other way than a black Italian superstar conquering the world to win that battle against racism in Italy at this moment in time.
To end on a lighter note, it's true that Italian football has generally always been very competitive like you said. That's why the Juventus dominance was rather devastating because even back during the Milan dynasty there were titles for Napoli, Sampdoria and Juventus sprinkled in there and between 1999 and 2002 there were four different winners in a row (Milan, Lazio, Roma, Juventus), which is rather unthinkable even in England with all the well-financed clubs around. Hopefully it remains like last year so it doesn't revert back to the pre-2020 shambles of Juve sweeping everything.
