The clock ticked towards the 78th minute inside a Stadio Olimpico that was caught between stomach churning tension and desperate ambition. Roma’s fans had seen their team’s 3-1 lead over visiting Juventus eviscerated in two manic second half minutes, thanks to goals from Manuel Locatelli and Dejan Kulusevski.
There was still plenty of time for the Giallorossi to turn the tide back in their favour, of course, but then Weston McKennie clipped a right footed ball from the left wing, Chris Smalling could only deflect the ball on its way rather than clear. Fortunately for the former Manchester United man, it was only arcing towards Mattia De Sciglio, a full-back with just one senior career goal to his name (and that arrived almost five years ago).
Only the 29-year-old Italy international didn’t much look like a player in possession of a solitary career strike. Instead, he cushioned the ball onto his right foot with a deft flex of his chest before hammering home a thunderous half volley into the bottom corner, past a helpless Rui Patricio.
If you think the drama ceased there however, think again. A few minutes later and the Bianconeri were reduced to 10 men after Matthijs de Ligt received a second yellow card for handling the ball inside the box, gifting the home side a route back to parity. A penalty awarded and a point (at least) in sight for Jose Mourinho’s men, only captain Lorenzo Pellegrini, fresh from pinging home a beautiful free-kick earlier in the game, could not repeat the trick from 12 yards and saw his tame effort saved by Wojciech Szczęsny. Three points to Turin.
Ordinarily, this type of result would be the sort looked back upon in mid-May, when season reviews are compiled, as journalists chronicle another Juventus title procession. Yet all Massimiliano Allegri’s team achieved with their second half heroics in the Italian capital was ensure they were still within touching distance of the Champions League places. A 37th Scudetto, for now, will have to wait until at least 2023.
After a decade daubed in black and white dominance, Serie A has finally awoken into a competition once more, with the major players moving back to the top table.
Inter, not content for settling with their Antonio Conte assisted title victory last year, currently sit atop Italy’s top tier, four points clear of Napoli and city rivals Milan, with a game in hand. However, a victory for Stefano Pioli’s Rossoneri in next week’s Milan derby would whet the appetite for a bona fide title run-in for the ages, while Napoli could send the race into overdrive were they to follow that up with their own victory over the champions the week after in Naples.
That any one of three teams could legitimately make a compelling case for a Scudetto victory at this stage of the season feels like a hark back to the turn of the century, when Juve were slugging it out with Inter and Roma for top honours on the final day of the season in 2002. Of course, one could argue that only five points separated the top three of Juve, Roma and Napoli in 2017, but the Old Lady monopolising top spot from match day five until the end of that season tells its own story.
In the present day, what we are presented with is Juventus as a waning force, almost punch drunk after witnessing their former boss lead a rival to glory, tearing away their grip on the Serie A title after nine consecutive victories. We then have the comeback kids in Milan, over 10 years removed from their last Scudetto lift and powered by an old head in Zlatan Ibrahimovic on the pitch and a father like figure off it in Pioli, who is doing wonders for starlets such as Sandro Tonali and Rafael Leão.
Down south, Napoli are at 32 years and counting awaiting the return of the Serie A crown, not seen since the days of El Diego twisting the blood of every defender unlucky enough to step in his path. In the first full season since El Pibe de Oro’s passing, imagine the emotion that would course through every single person in Naples, inside the stadium which now bears his name, should Italian football’s grandest prize return there for a third time.
Just discussing these possibilities, these narratives intrinsically linked to so much history, heartbreak, controversy and chaos, shows how much Italian football is evolving in the aftermath of Juventus’ 2020/21 downfall.
Traditionally, the expectation would have been for Juve to sweep up the best players from the rest of the division and sweep every domestic honour going once again. Only the returning Allegri has been unable to steer the Bianconeri back to the summit. Instead, they’re duking it out with perennial entertainers Atalanta for the fourth Champions League spot, a point behind the Bergamo club having played a game more.
Atalanta solidifying their spot as a Champions League level club is also an achievement that can no longer be ignored. 2019/2020’s adventure to the quarter-finals was impressive enough, but enjoying a second knockout qualification in 2020/21, another group stage berth this term and potentially a fourth for the 2022/23 campaign is spectacularly impressive work from Gian Piero Gasperini and his squad, who haven’t so much as put the cat among the pigeons over the last three years as they have released a pack of rabid dogs into a lake full of geese. Usual top four botherers Lazio and Roma have been usurped by La Dea, who have added a different dimension to how the top table of Italian football is traditionally laid out.
And it is with this in mind that we cannot ignore the stories outside of the top four. With Jose Mourinho tragically frittering his way around another high profile job that seems beyond his outdated mid-noughties philosophies, you should always expect fireworks, meltdowns and elite level pettiness that ends with three quarters of his squad wanting to chin him. In the aftermath of the collapse against Juventus, the formerly Special One lambasted his players’ weak mentality and, although back-to-back league wins have followed, you sense those results are doing nothing more than putting a tea towel over a pressure cooker. The implosion should be a colossal event worthy of the Coliseum.
A major positive talking point emerging from the Giallorossi’s season however is the rebirth of Tammy Abraham’s goalscoring form. The former Chelsea forward has notched 12 times in his last 12 games, the first English player to reach 10 goals in Europe’s top five leagues this season. Not only that, but only Bayern Munich’s net bulging behemoth Robert Lewandowski has bagged more than Abraham since November. His story is another testament to how much depth is beginning to trickle through Serie A.
The story for the past 10 years had been one approaching ‘farmer’s league’ level derision, with Juventus mirroring Bayern’s dominance in Germany and PSG’s in France. Their closest rivals beset by mismanagement and financial peril, Agnelli and co laughed their way to title after title and a couple of Champions League final appearances without noticing that something was brewing beneath them.
Typically, it took Antonio Conte to erupt the smouldering Vesuvius that had been lying in wait for years, as his Inter team packed with Premier League old boys such as Ashley Young, Alexis Sanchez, Christian Eriksen and Romelu Lukaku stunned Andrea Pirlo’s faltering champions in 2021. Even the loss of Lukaku back to Chelsea hasn’t slowed Inter down, maintaining their momentum in a similar manner to Jurgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund, who wrestled the Bundesliga crown away from Bayern in 2011 and 2012. The fear now, of course, is that Juve will double down on their usual domineering characteristics to re-establish themselves as the eminent force in Italy, an intention signified with their capture of Fiorentina’s free scoring Serbian Dušan Vlahović.
Yet even the addition of a striker with 17 goals in 21 league games this season won’t necessarily be enough to solve Juventus’ shortcomings. The imperious Federico Chiesa’s cruciate ligament injury has one of their most dynamic players sidelined for what will likely be most of 2022. Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci having a combined age of 71 is also a situation that, despite their ability to produce performances at the level they showed throughout Euro 2020, does need addressing sooner rather than later as it is not just on the pitch where they will be missed, but in the dressing room too when the time comes. One only needs to look at how Manchester City suffered in the immediate aftermath of Vincent Kompany’s departure to see how vital it is to have adequate characters in place to step up when the time comes.
A struggling Old Lady looking up at the resurgent youth of her Milanese rivals is a fascinating story that could play out for years to come. While across Turin, a lot of noise is being made by Ivan Juric’s Torino, with the Croatian death metal enthusiast instilling the same mentality in his players that his mentor Gasperini has at Atalanta over the last five years. The former Genoa man’s approach was defined by one writer from analytics site ultimouomo.com recently as being outright “satanic” which, let’s face it, is a style of football that cannot be ignored.
The Granata are now 15 points better off than they were at this stage last season and, rather than languishing in 16th and 17th position as they did for the previous two campaigns under Davide Nicola, are now staring down the barrel of a top half finish. One glance at the highlights of their recent 4-0 demolition of Fiorentina, themselves a challenger for this season’s European places, should tell you all you need to know about what Juric is cooking up at Grande Torino. We should all expect to see it play out more prominently in both Italy and the continent in the next couple of seasons.
So while we are still some way from the days where Serie A ruled the world with it’s regular breaking of world record transfer fees, monopolisation of the Champions League and classic cult teams that live long in the memory like Batistuta and Rui Costa’s Fiorentina or the Parma of Veron, Thuram, Crespo and Cannavaro, it certainly feels as though a corner has been turned back towards genuine competition both inside and outside of the top four.
Roberto Mancini reinventing the national team over the past 18 months and delivering Italy their first European Championship since 1968 was no mere fluke or grand finale for an ageing set of players. It was a statement of intent for years to come, with many of the former Sampdoria icon’s most trusted players plying their trade in Serie A and doing so with plenty of time on their side.
If both the blue and red sides of Milan can keep their heads and continue on their current paths, if Napoli can channel as much of El Diego’s spirit as humanly possible, if Atalanta’s fairytale evolves into the norm and Torino decide they’d quite like to follow suit, Juve’s days of dominance could well and truly be over for a long time to come.
So maybe leave Manchester City to run away with their fourth Premier League title in five years and divert a bit more attention towards Italy between now and May. The drama hasn’t even begun to peak.
