Fiorentina striker Luca Toni has admitted to Italian press that making the move from Juventus to play for Al Nasr in UAE was 'a mistake'.
The former Bayern Munich hitman moved to UAE after signing for The Blue Wave in January this year, but soon transferred back to Italy to play for his former club Fiorentina.
In an interview with Corriere della Sera, the Italian forward said he had been disappointed with the standard of football in UAE and the Middle East in general, advising other players not to make the switch.
"Do not go to Dubai. I like playing real football and it is not like that over there. The place is nice, but the atmosphere is not," Toni said.
"I want it to be a challenge on the field and I want to play at a high level in a competitive league," he added.
Toni also bemoaned the decline in quality of his own country's league, saying that when he left Serie A to play in Germany in 2007 the Italian league was of a better standard than the Bundesliga, but that now it was the opposite.
"The standard of football has got worse. We are going down in quality. The problem is the quality that we offer to the fans. Without new stadiums we are not going anywhere," he stated.
