Serie A cambierà. What will Italian calcio look like next season?
Serie A cambierà. What will Italian calcio look like next season?
By Mirko Corli, writing from Torino
With Inter lifting Coppa Italia, the season is over in Italy. The World Champions completed a “little treble” by winning the Italian SuperCup, the Club World Cup, and Coppa Italia. There was no chance for them in Serie A though, which was handsomely dominated by AC Milan.
Other verdicts at the close of the season: Napoli will be back in the Champions League as it was during Maradona’s times, Udinese will fight for the same dream in the qualifying round in August. Lazio, Roma, and Palermo will get a spot in the Europa League, while Juventus has to start all over again outside European competitions. This hasn’t happened to Juve since Coach Maifredi, excluding the year they were relegated to Serie B, of course. Surprisingly, Sampdoria will be in the second division next year, alongside Brescia and Bari.
Now we look ahead. What will happen next season? It’s too early to say something without making countless mistakes, but we can already look at a few things that seem certain to happen.
1) Milan will be the team to beat to get the Championship.
They are going to keep all the key players (Ibra, KPB, Robinho, Pato, Seedorf, Thiago Silva). They brought in Mexes to give some rest to Nesta and Thiago Silva. They sold only Pirlo who wasn’t in Allegri’s plans anymore. They are probably getting a quality midfielder, able to defend and attack (Hamsik, Fabregas, Van Der Vaart are the most rumored ones right now), so they will improve for sure.
2) Honestly, Inter is going to be the only opponent that can challenge Milan.
By getting a quality and fast striker (Sanchez from Udinese is the One for Inter, even moreso than Tevez) and a good midfielder, by having back Samuel in the defensive line and the best Milito we saw last year, they still have an outstanding team. My belief is that they must only fight for the Scudetto and leave the Champions League as a “plus”, with no anxiety on it. This will be key to succeed.
3) The respective situations at Lazio, Roma, Juventus are filled with uncertainty.
Lazio outperformed for a large part of the season, without fresh players it’s difficult to imagine such a season once more; Roma is only going to have a solid shape once it clearly defines the club’s board and technical leadership; Juventus will start again with a new coach, former captain Antonio Conte, who impressed in Serie B with Bari and Siena this season.
Conte has mentioned that he’s going to play a 4-2-4 as he did in Siena, but I am guessing that this will not happen, though it would be entertaining. One thing is to play that way when you’re in Serie B and you have by far the best team of the league (men, quality, options available), another is to play that way in a league where you do not have the best team, others are better than you, and any player on any team can steal points from you at any moment.
4) Udinese will probably not find themselves in the top places of the league, especially if they manage to get into the Champions League knockout round stages. The club is too small club for getting good results both in the national and european competition.
5) We’ll see a lot of new coaches. A lot.
The already mentioned Conte, maybe Luis Enrique at Roma (but do not forget Stefano Pioli’s chances), and Vincenzo Torrente on Catania’s bench (if the gossip is true). Torrente did oustandingly well in the third division with little club Gubbio, having him in the top league will be a very interesting fact to see.
There’s so much to look forward to in these summer months, what are you hoping to see in Serie A next season?
