Italy-France: When 1990s Serie A and the Zidane era was considered 'the world's best championship'

Feature examining Serie A's dominance in the 1990s when it was considered world football's toughest league, ahead of France's visit to Italy.

As France prepares to face Italy on Thursday, 25 years after Zinédine Zidane's departure from Juventus, the article reflects on Serie A's golden era of the 1990s when the league was widely regarded as the world's most difficult championship.

Between 1992 and 1998, Italian clubs reached seven consecutive Champions League finals, a modern record. The league's dominance stemmed from wealthy industrialists and businessmen—including Massimo Moratti at Inter Milan, Giovanni Agnelli at Juventus, and Silvio Berlusconi at AC Milan—who invested heavily in football as both a passion and a showcase of power.

This influx of capital attracted the world's greatest players: Roberto Baggio, Paolo Maldini, Alessandro Del Piero, Ronaldo, and Zidane himself.

Former players who competed in Serie A during this period describe the intensity and quality as unmatched. Benoît Cauet, who played for Inter Milan from 1997 to 2001, recalls that despite AC Milan and Juventus dominating with nine of eleven titles between 1990 and 2000, six or seven teams could realistically challenge for the championship each season.

Goalkeeper Sébastien Frey, who joined Inter at 18 from AS Cannes, found himself training and competing alongside world-class talents daily. The mentality was uncompromising: every match, every training session was about winning.