Are We Ready For Europe?

By: cathal | January 2nd, 2009

Apologies for the blank post I left you with earlier. Something remarkably strange occurred that I can’t explain. Thanks go to MAD and Franco for inspiring this post.

With Lazio aiming to secure a spot in European football next season, would it be realistic for us to expect them to deliver on both fronts? Is there any point in qualifying for Europe given its potential to damage league campaigns? Can we sustain our performance both locally and on the continent?

From a financial perspective, it is absolutely critical that we make Europe. I don’t have the knowledge to provide you with exact figures, but the money we would bring in is significant. It would be more than enough to make a valuable contribution to our club. Not only that, but Europe also attracts players and will help us to keep our stars at the club. In order to ensure that the likes of Pandev, Ledesma and Foggia remain with us, we need to enter the European competitions by whatever means possible. Also, it is much easier to lure the Elanos and Mascheranos of this world with the bait of European football.

However, take a look at Udinese and Sampdoria this season. Both sides are languishing in the lower half of the table (12th and 14th respectively) and both sides have endured a successful UEFA Cup campaign to date. I think it’s fair to say that the demand of European football has taken its toll on their league campaigns. Both teams were comfortably in the Top 7 last season and were challenging Fiorentina and Milan for Champions League spots. Udinese have struggled in the defence area and they have been exposed more frequently as the season has gone on. In my opinion, the injury to Zapata has stopped their defence from functioning on both fronts and that’s where the problem lies. Samp are the same but different. They had a bad start to the season and having to focus on Europe and Serie A has prevented them from progressing up the table. Even Fiorentina only shot up the table once they were eliminated from the Champions League and Rioma have also struggled to find consistency in all competitions. It is also no coincidence that Napoli, who were immediately dumped from the UEFA Cup and Genoa who marginally missed out on qualification are sitting in European spots. Safe to say there is a correlation between European participation and league performance.

Would we suffer the same fate? Would we be able to challenge on both fronts? I think we could survive it or rather we should. In 2006-2007, we were eliminated from the Champions League at the first stage and our season never got going. However, I firmly believe that things would have been different had we not been going through an incredible injury crisis. Also, we have strengthened since then. We now have two competent goalkeepers, four solid centre backs, talented wing backs, a plethora of good quality midfielders and a load of attacking power. The only problem we may have is a lack of superstars in the team. That may halt us from being challengers but if we end up in Europe, I think we have enough about us to achieve our goals in all competitions.