IT'S the Italian equivalent of Sunderland going bust and being forced to play in the Northern League.

Fiorentina, the club that brought Gabriel Batistuta across from Argentina and gave Roberto Baggio his big break, will begin next season in Serie C2.

And it's because La Viola, who have a 47,000 capacity stadium and include among their squad Italian internationals Enrico Chiesa and Angelo di Livio, are bankrupt.

Chelsea, who have a reported debt of £97m, take note.

For every pound that Nationwide League clubs are looking for to cover the shortfall in their budgets, Fiorentina owed a fistful of Euros.

Gabriele Marcotti, a London-based reporter for Italian sports daily Corriere dello Sport, said: "In Italy, clubs need to get a licence to operate, and to get that they need to fulfil certain criteria.

"One is that they must have paid all of their staff up to April 30, and another is their total debt must not be greater than one-third of their turnover for the previous year.

"Fiorentina were £22m short of meeting that target, and after their owner's TV stations went bust, they followed suit.

"They had to sell Rui Costa and Francesco Toldo for £42m last summer to stay in business, but they had no more assets left."

The country that brought the football world multi-million pound deals is on its uppers.

Just as Premiership clubs are bracing themselves for a huge drop in revenue from the next TV deal, so Italian teams are preparing for tough times.

Transfer fees are on the decline. The biggest deal in Serie A thus far this summer is midfielder Davide Baiocco's £8m move to Juventus from Perugia.

But it is huge wages, the source of angst across the English game, that are causing the money worries among Serie A's big hitters.

Marcotti said: "The problem in Italy isn't the superstars - it's the wages of average players that are hurting clubs. Lazio have a player called Guerino Gottardi who only plays about four games a year - and he's on £40,000 a week.

"Roma have nine players on £60,000 a week or more; Inter have 13.

"Only three are on that at Manchester United.

"Ronaldo, Christian Vieri and Alvaro Recoba all took pay cuts at Inter this summer, and Matias Almeyda took a 20 per cent drop in wages to join Inter from Parma.

"Lazio's annual wage bill at one point last year was £120m - and their owner, Sergio Cragnotti, is not a particularly wealthy man.

"The pay-per-view contracts in Italy are a lot more lucrative than the English TV deal, and the big five clubs - Juventus, Inter, Milan, Roma and Lazio - get between £40m and £46m each per year.

"But the contracts end in 2005, and the clubs have been told that next time they'll get about 60 per cent of what they're getting at the moment.''