If I had to choose a title for this actual season review of the Italian Serie A, I would without any doubt write "A soporific season".
Why? The answer is easy – if we take a quick glance at the table after 22 days, we can easily see that there are already (apart from unpredictable twists) 3 teams that will be relegated, that the gap between Juventus and their chasers seems to be unbridgeable, and that there are 7 teams beneath the Bianconeri to fight for the positions that guarantee the participation to next year’s Champions League and Europa League.
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Juventus have 4 points more than Roma and 6 more than Napoli; but this gap is doomed to become, more than likely, larger. Indeed, Juventus have played 21 matches, one less than their pursuers and they will have to match up the game against Crotone, a team with 13 points in the table. So this gap has, on paper, to be considered potentially of 7 points.
But what the table also says is that Juventus will hardly be reached, thanks to the difference in quality between them and the other teams. This is, paradoxically, the season in which they are having the more seesawing trend, having already lost 4 matches: just to help you understand what it means, in the entire last season, they had lost 5 matches, and just 3 matches two years ago.
Despite unprecedented setbacks, none of the other teams have taken advantage of Juventus’ struggles.
A look at one or two places behind Juventus, we can say that Roma, Napoli and Inter will fight for two positions in the next Champions League; Inter’s performance and position is the most intriguing surprise in this season’s Serie A. They started the season with many problems, with Mancini leaving the team and the sad period of De Boer. After the 84 days of the Dutch manager’s reign, Inter was 8 points far from Champions League positions.
Stefano Pioli has brought a new wave of normality (that can look like an oxymoron, but it's not!) and has built up a team with a new identity, with important newcomers like Roberto Gagliardini and, above all, good results: Inter are 3 points away from Napoli, and in the middle of a fight for qualification spots to the top European competition.
Lazio, Milan, Atalanta and Fiorentina are the teams fighting for the remaining positions in the Europa League spots. Milan (with 21 matches played) and Fiorentina (22 matches) close this group of teams with 37 points.
6 points beneath them at 31 points, Torino open the very particular group of teams without any real target. This crowd is made up of 9 teams, from Torino to Empoli, that actually have no real target; impossible for them to get into the Europa League positions but, at the same time, pretty much safe from relegation.
The difference between the last three teams on the table, and the one immediately above them, is bigger than ever this season. And this gap is not only merely mathematical, but (and it's more serious) qualitative.
None of Pescara, Palermo or Crotone supporters should take it out on me, but the three teams do not have the qualities to compete in this Serie A. And this fact stresses more and more an idea that I've been carrying forward for a long time: 20 teams in Serie A are really too many. We need to seriously start thinking about coming back to an Italian league with 18 teams, as it was before 2004.
