Last Wednesday night in northern Italy, Manchester United, twenty-time champions of England, were four goals down to a club that was playing in Serie B three seasons ago. Nico Paz scored inside two minutes. By the time Como led 4-0, their coach, Cesc Fabregas, was already thinking about mercy. “I told them to slow down at 4-0,” he admitted afterward. Joshua Zirkzee’s stoppage-time goal made it 4-1 and did nothing to hide what had happened.
It was a humiliation for United, but it was also a snapshot. Two of the most decorated clubs in the sport, United and Juventus, are in the middle of long, grinding declines, and a new class of club is rising past them. The question is whether this is a blip, a correction, or the end of an era.
The Como result felt like the bottom of a very long slide, and it came after a season that looked like recovery. Michael Carrick took over as interim coach in January, beat Manchester City 2-0 in his first game, was handed a two-year contract in May, and United finished third to return to the Champions League. Even then, Gary Neville was careful, calling the derby win “not the return of Manchester United” but the return of something that at least resembled the club.
He was right to be careful. United have won two of their first eleven games this season, are winless in seven, and were 13th in the Premier League table a week ago. At Como, they were out-possessed, out-thought and out-run. Carrick called the performance not acceptable. Captain Bruno Fernandes went further, saying United were not brave enough on the ball and pointing at decisions made by the coaching staff, a public break that drew criticism of its own. Jamie Carragher took Fernandes to task for it, but his wider verdict was harsher than anything aimed at one player: United, he said, is “rotten from top to bottom.” Sky Sports’ Paul Merson argued Carrick should be given more time, yet pundits have already begun handicapping his successor, with Eddie Howe, Julian Nagelsmann and Antonio Conte among the names. Even Fabregas, reportedly, was privately surprised by how easy the night had been.
That is the point. Blaming Carrick alone misses how many managers have walked into the same building and failed in the same ways. Recruitment that doesn’t fit a coherent plan. Players who don’t appear fully committed. A revolving door in the dugout that resets the project every eighteen months or so. These are problems that sit above the touchline, and a new coach, however popular, can’t fix them from there.
Turin Giants missing family dynamic
Juventus won the last of their 36 league titles in 2020, the ninth in a row. Since then Inter, Milan and Napoli have all passed them. Last season they missed the Champions League, a place Como took instead. After seven games this season Juventus sit eighth in Serie A on 11 points, three behind fifth-placed Como, whom they visit on Sunday.
The recruitment tells the story. Under chief executive Damien Comolli, Juventus signed Jonathan David, João Mário, Loïs Openda and Edon Zhegrova last summer, and none of the four was considered a success. Italian pundit Franco Ordine put it bluntly on the television show Pressing: Comolli’s “transfer market moves have made things worse.” Coach Luciano Spalletti and Comolli clashed openly over the market, and Comolli and technical director François Modesto are now gone, replaced by CEO Giovanni Carnevali and football chief Frederic Massara. The club that once identified and developed young talent ahead of its rivals doesn’t seem to be doing so anymore.
Is that because the Agnelli family stepped back? Not exactly. Andrea Agnelli left the presidency in 2022, but the family never left the club. When their holding company Exor turned down an all-cash offer from Tether, John Elkann said that Juve “has been part of my family for 102 years.” The problem looks less like absence and more like instability: the football brain trust that built the nine-in-a-row side dispersed years ago, and the people hired since have rarely stayed long enough to build something coherent.
A Shift in Power
While the giants stumble, others have moved in. In Serie A, Inter and Lazio lead on 19 points, with Roma, Milan, Como and newly promoted Frosinone all ahead of Juventus. In the Premier League, Brighton are third with the league’s best goal difference, Brentford and Leeds sit sixth and seventh, and United are in the bottom half. Bayer Leverkusen’s 2024 Bundesliga title and Real Betis’s emergence in La Liga tell the same story from other countries.
Brighton are the model. Fabian Hürzeler arrived promising to “challenge the establishment,” and Sky Sports now argues Brighton are the best team in the Premier League, crediting a recruitment pipeline tied tightly to a clear playing style. The BBC reported this month that they are one of only two Premier League clubs to turn a transfer-spending profit over five years. Buy young, develop, sell high, reinvest: Brighton have done it better than almost anyone, and others are copying it.
It isn’t flawless. ESPN noted that Brighton spent nearly £200 million on nine signings in Hürzeler’s first summer and about £300 million the next, with heavy turnover and uneven results. And Como is not a pure Brighton story. Its rise is funded by wealthy owners, not just clever scouting. Still, the direction of travel is the same: clubs with a plan are beating clubs with a name.
Are the fair play rules working?
This is where the argument gets uncomfortable. Profit and sustainability rules, which cap Premier League losses at £105 million over three years, were meant to level the field. Critics say they did the opposite. After Everton’s points deduction, Neville called the league “lawless” and said greed had spiralled out of control. Gary Lineker called it “ridiculous” that newly promoted clubs can’t really compete. Former Everton chief executive Keith Wyness said “these rules are not built on common sense.” Nottingham Forest went further, accusing the league of destroying mobility in the pyramid.
The case against the rules is that they lock in the status quo: the clubs that earn the most from huge stadiums, commercial deals and European football are allowed to spend the most.
Then there is Manchester City. This September an independent commission found City guilty of 114 of the 115 charges the Premier League brought against them. It found that sham sponsorship deals formed a disguised funding scheme, with more than £900 million routed in as sponsorship between 2009 and 2018. Premier League chief executive Richard Masters said the findings show how the club “systematically broke Premier League rules for nearly a decade.” City say they are innocent and will appeal, and sanctions are still to be decided in a separate hearing. Meanwhile, they are top of the table with seven wins from seven.
So are the rules working? The honest answer is: partly, and not in the way their architects imagined. If the findings stand, they confirm that someone did try to find a cheat code, and that the system took more than three years to catch up. At the same time, the rise of Brighton, Como and Brentford owes more to smart recruitment than to the rulebook. The rules haven’t made the giants fall, but they may have made it harder for new money to buy its way past them, which leaves cleverness as the only route in. Supporters of the rules would add that the alternative was a league where clubs spend themselves to ruin, which is exactly what the rules were built to prevent.
Fallen doesn’t mean finished. United have the revenue and the history to recover, and Juventus have an owner who has made clear he isn’t going anywhere. But both clubs have spent years assuming that size would eventually fix things: the next coach, the next signing, the next summer. Como and Brighton are making the opposite case, that a clear plan held longer than one manager’s tenure beats a famous name.
Sunday brings the sequel. Juventus visit the same Como side that took apart United on Wednesday, the club that finished above them last season and sits above them now. Not long ago that was a fixture the giants won without thinking. Today it is a test, and for both United and Juventus the real question is whether they can still build something that lasts, or whether the old names are all they have left.
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