What’s myth and reality in the fact that Italian football is back?
Italy hasn’t been to a world championship in nine years! They haven’t even qualified (last time they were eliminated by North Macedonia!). It picked up a European title in 2021 (on account of 2020) at a favorable juncture. It was the magical summer of the Mancini-Vialli pairing (sadly the last).
This year Serie A gives three of the Uefa Champions League quarterfinalists: Napoli, Inter and AC Milan. According to the draw, most likely one of them will play the final (if Benfica doesn’t mess them up). Are these enough arguments to believe that, at last, Serie A has recovered? For more than a decade it’s been suffering. The answer is: not quite – we’re not seeing a real revival. It’s just an illusion.
Napoli is galloping towards the title and can’t be stopped. That much we know, we’ve been writing here about Napoli’s magical year, carried by Kvara & Osimhen towards a Maradonian season. In the last Serie A text I urged you to take a closer look at the standings. The standings are like an ECG, telling us what’s wrong with the heart of the league. Like an X-ray – it shows us where the fracture is, what hurts. And what do we see?
Balance and imbalance
Series A is deeply unbalanced. Between first place Napoli and last place Cremonese (the team where the late Vialli made his debut) there is a gap of over fifty points! That’s enormous.
What’s more, the relegation battle also seems largely decided, with Verona, the legendary Sampdoria (where the late Vialli made his great career) and Cremonese being with one and a half feet in Serie B.
Spezia, Salernitana, Lecce, Empoli still have some chances to relegate, but from 13th place upwards, from Monza, the places in the standings seem definitive. This is not what a rejuvenated championship looks like.
Serie A is still suffering because the gap between the rich clubs and the rest of the pack, le altre as the Italians say, has grown instead of shrinking. A league is balanced when anyone can mess with anyone. Despite AC Milan’s failure (with Zlatan becoming a legend once again as the oldest scorer in Serie A history) at Udinese, and Inter’s lost at Spezia, this is not happening in Italy. Which brings us to where I wanted to arrive: namely, of all Europe’s big leagues, Italy remains the most predictable. Translated into bettors’ language: there’s a lot of bread to be eaten here.
