I don't think it's the best-written
article ever, but I do agree with the premise-- as much as I hate Napoli and their ridiculously out of touch fans, and as badly as my supporter self wants Lazio to make the Champions League, I think it'd be a disaster for Italy. Our miserable record in Europe under Lotito is a long-running joke, and frankly, we're just not that good of a team.
Even though Reja's touch has worn off and he should be shown the door at the end of the season, he took what was a relegation team under Ballardini and made it into a top-six side. It's been somewhat of a miracle because in reality, we're really nothing better than a mid-table side.
I did some analysis of our team's market value back when we got knocked out of Europa League by Atletico Madrid, and our players are only worth about
3.2 million Euros per. That's less than 16th place Genoa, at 4 million Euros per player, 17th place Fiorentina at 4.5 million Euros, and much less than today's opposition in Napoli, at 7.76 million Euros.
That average needs to be at least 7 million Euros to compete in the Champions League, and at 3.3 million, even the Europa League is a big struggle, as we saw when we were lucky to not be eliminated in the group stage.
As badly as I wish things were different, the fact is we simply don't have the quality to compete in the Europa League, much less the Champions League. As I've been saying for years, we need to clean house-- drop the size of the squad down from 30 to about 24 players, get rid of crap players, and put the onus on quality versus quantity in our mercatos.