Pavel Nedved's shot from outside the box apart, Jens Lehmann had almost nothing to do over the course of two full matches. For a club of Juventus's quality, that's quite astonishing. Equally, Inter missed a lot of chances in the first game against Villarreal but they never had a shot in the second leg. There was no spirit, no attitude, no enthusiasm from either side.

Italian football needs to take a long, hard look at itself because there's a serious malaise there that really needs addressing. The gap between the big three teams and the rest is huge, bigger even than in England and Spain. Juventus are winning the league at a stroll not because they're playing highquality stuff but because the opposition just isn't up to it. So many Serie A clubs are up to their eyes in debt that the quality of player on their payroll is sub-standard to put it mildly.

The age profile of the big three teams doesn't bear comparison with the Arsenals and Barcelonas because instead of developing young talent, they just go out and splash cash on established players from the lower league clubs. They'll do the same this summer. Juventus need a whole regeneration and they'll do it by spending millions and millions of euros. Milan need to replace three of their back four but it won't be a case of easing through a few youngsters from the ranks.

Finding new players to improve a team should be a process that happens every season. But these clubs have the mentality that it's better to spend money on proven stars even if they only have a limited shelf-life than to take a chance on young players.

When I was in Turin last week, some old friends of mine were telling me that Juventus haven't brought anyone through the ranks to be an established first-team player since Roberto Bettega . . . and he made his debut in 1970. The last Milan one that really stands out is Paolo Maldini. That's just wrong.

There's something desperately awry in these clubs when that's the case.

Another problem is that Italian football is quite insular and the clubs haven't gone looking for Africans and South Americans with as much energy as teams in England and Spain have.

They generally tend still to look to their own or to players from western Europe when recruiting. But people have to face up to the reality that there simply aren't as many good youngsters emerging from the affluent countries any more.

Serie A's insularity has meant that it's suffered as much as any league as a result. Because the volume of young Italian players is no longer what it used to be, the whole league has been downgraded. Clubs down the division are poverty-stricken and the players aren't coming through in the same numbers for them to sell on to boost profits.

So instead of trying to build from the bottom with young talent, these clubs try and ape what the big teams are doing. They buy overrated players and pay them huge salaries and fall deeper and deeper into debt. There are no ingredients in the cake, just icing. I've watched Juventus for most of their games this season and the league has been a doddle for them.

That's a sad reflection on the league as a whole.

You have to change your outlook on things and the Italian sides haven't done that.

Milan still have Serginho, Maldini and Jaap Stam playing in their back four, all of them a long way the wrong side of 30. They even had Alessandro Costacurta playing a few weeks short of 40.

Where is the young talent?

Where is the next generation? They're at other clubs, where the likes of Arsene Wenger and Frank Rijkaard have made conscious decisions to build the future around youth and energy, around players who are hungry and who want to establish themselves. Meanwhile, at the likes of Juventus and Inter, you have old players who are in a comfort zone and who can't get out of it for the big games.

I have no doubt that there'll be a knock-on effect when the World Cup comes around . . . I don't fancy Italy at all for the tournament. Okay, we know they have a good defence and two excellent central defenders in particular. But where's the creativity going to come from?

Gennaro Gattuso will work hard and Andrea Pirlo will be good from dead balls but they won't have a Riquelme or a Ronaldinho or a Rooney.

Gattuso and Pirlo wouldn't be in the semi-final of this competition without the likes of Kaka and Andrei Shevchenko. They're class players who would have fitted into the Milan teams of old.

Maybe the fact that Silvio Berlusconi's money will always be there has made Milan complacent but there's no doubt at all that Lyon were the more vibrant side in that quarter-final and they shot themselves in the foot by falling back into their own box repeatedly in the final 10 minutes. It's hard to see Barcelona being so generous.

So it was a sobering week for the Italian clubs. Not that Arsenal will worry about all that. The atmosphere in the club has been buoyant all week and I don't buy into the theory that because they've been involved in Europe, they'll be distracted going into today's match against Manchester United.

If they'd been beaten in Turin, if they'd gone out of the competition, then maybe there'd be a problem. But everyone's on a high and there's no shortage of motivation when you're going to Old Trafford. I'd firmly expect Arsenal to take at least a point from the game.