Serie A has B-grade feel

Barcelona can't rule the world indefinitely. It's hard to imagine right now, but in a decade's time the Catalan giants could be a modest force on the European stage, just as the once-invincible AC Milan are these days.

Pep Guardiola will move on, and Barca's methods will be reverse-engineered and applied by rivals. Xavi and Carles Puyol will retire, and Leo Messi will join Manchester City in his prime.

This week's blip was exactly that, however. AC Milan pulled off a small coup by snatching a point off Pep's machine at Camp Nou this week, just when that task was beginning to seem impossible.

But any temptation to speculate about a long-awaited resurgence of the Rossoneri, or of the Italian game as a whole, is misplaced. For one thing, the men who did damage to Barca - Alexandre Pato and Thiago Silva - are as Brazilian as Gisele Bundchen's left nipple, and both are surely bound for Spain or England sooner or later.

And the vulnerability of Serie A's heavyweights was illustrated on Wednesday night when Inter Milan were capsized at home by Trabzonspor, the gatecrashers who only entered the draw after Fenerbahce were expelled due to a match-fixing scandal in Turkey.

Much like Italy under Silvio Berlusconi's weird and wayward guidance, Serie A football is masking its decline with a veneer of defiant consumption.

The Milan giants can still compete in the market for marquee players like Diego Forlan and Zlatan Ibrahimovic since they are both owned by tycoons and don't carry much debt. But the future is murky, with revenues curbed by low attendances, which are limited in turn by decrepit city-owned stadiums, fan violence, racism and the stubborn stink of match-fixing.

Speaking of which, remember Juventus? They finished seventh in Serie A last season, and are slowly recovering from the Calciopoli calamity. President Andrea Agnelli has wisely invested in a new, club-owned stadium. But there's still a long way back to the top for the Old Lady, whose nickname is now amusingly apt: the club has effectively become a luxury retirement home for Italian veterans of the 2006 World Cup.

As for the Azzurri, their craptastic showing at South Africa 2010 revealed an alarming paucity of fresh Italian talent, barring the likes of Giuseppe Rossi and Mario Balotelli.

And none of the current senior internationals can bear comparison to Paolo Maldini, Franco Baresi and Roberto Baggio at their peaks.

Yes, it's true the Italian game has always been defined by resilience and pragmatism. And yes, Inter conquered Europe only two years ago - but without Jose Mourinho's galvanising ego, they look a shadow of the class of 2009.

Serie A is lagging behind the third-ranked Bundesliga in the Uefa league coefficient rankings, which determine the distribution of places in European competitions. The Fifth-ranked Ligue 1 and even the sixth-ranked Portuguese Primeira Liga are threatening to overtake.

So don't count on an Italian renaissance soon. If any country is going to challenge the Spanish football hegemony in the foreseeable future, it will be Germany.