Analyze the last five Serie A champions and discover which Italian club could win next. Get insights on Inter, Milan, Juventus, and more.
One of the most uncertain leagues (counting only the top 5) regarding future champions is probably the Italian Serie A. Juventus vs. Internazionale vs. Milano is an everlasting fight between the most successful Italian clubs. Who will come on top at the end of the season?
In previous years Napoli came into calculations, and we got the Fantastic Four.
Title defense on the horizon?
Inter won Serie A last season with a comfortable margin, 19 points. Inter had two highest rated players based on Sofascore Rating — Hakan Çalhanoğlu and Lautaro Martinez. In fact, as a more dominant fact — Inter had five players among 10 highest rated Serie A players last season. Inter had most goals scored and least goals conceded. It was a dominant performance, and everyone else just had to say — Congratulazioni!
Inter is sitting in the driving seat at the start of the new season. Majority of the team stayed, players that were loaned last season, are permanently transferred to Stadio Giuseppe Meazza (Davide Frattesi bought from Bologna for 29 mil. € and Marko Arnautović from Bologna for 8 mil.) so the Nerazzurri are hoping to repeat last season. Happiest news for the fans is that its top player, Lautaro Martinez signed a new contract that should keep him at the club until 2029.
Internazionale hasn’t won back-to-back titles for 15 years so now they have a chance to end that streak. Coach Simone Inzaghi made a team ready to tackle both Italian and European challenges.
Rossoneri challenging city rivals
Their city rival, AC Milan is always close by. But last season’s 19 points gap was obviously not close enough, so Milan is entering the season with a new coach at helm. Portuguese Paulo Fonseca took over the coaching duties at Rossoneri’s dressing room. He has Serie A experience as an ex-Roma coach and his last job was at Lille where he did well, so there are high expectations at Milan’s side of San Siro.
The club brought one European Champion in the dressing room — Spanish captain Álvaro Morata came and strengthened the attacking options, with Rafael Leão and Luka Jović. Of course, someone will have to step in Olivier Giroud’s shoes, who was their best goal scorer last season and who left for MLS.
Their biggest sale was Charles De Ketelaere leaving to Atalanta for 22 mil. € and their biggest purchase was Serbian centre-back Strahinja Pavlović who came from RB Salzburg for 18 mil. €.
Milan fans are pumped after preseason in which their club beat the clubs like Man City, Real Madrid and Barcelona, but preseason is something else. If Milan can carry the form in the Italian Championship, the title may be back in the showcase. With only two Serie A trophies in the last 20 years, the fans surely believe they deserve more.
Juventus lurking from behind
Juventus is also a strong candidate. Slowly forgetting how it is to win a league title, the last one was five years ago.
Maybe the new coach will guide them to 37th in club history. Thiago Motta took over the club after a successful Bologna stint. News that didn’t sit well with Internazionale fans as Motta was their ex-player.
Juventus wasn’t the most active Italian club, but it was the club who spent the most. They spent 90 million euros, most of it on Douglas Luiz, who came from Aston Villa for 51,5 mil. €. Khéphren Thuram also came to Allianz Stadium, Nice got 20 million euros for their midfielder.
But investment had to be made because some important players left the club. Soulé went to Roma, Huijsen to Bournemouth, Iling-Junior to Aston Villa, still talented Moise Kean to Fiorentina etc. We said that Juventus was the biggest Serie A spender, but after all those sales their transfer record is on the positive side.
Motta now has to incorporate all those changes in his plans, but we know that a club like Juventus doesn’t have time for a long adaptation period. They will open the new campaign against Como and three points are the only thing Juventus is thinking about.
The best of the rest
And what about others?
We said that Napoli is in the last couple of seasons a part of Serie A top tier clubs. In the last ten seasons they were six times among the top three clubs and have one title in that span. Last season they had a bad campaign and finished only 10 th in the Championship. So they had to make some changes.
Antonio Conte came to take over coaching duties making Napoli his 5 th Serie A club he was in charge of. And another stab in the hearts of Juventus fans, of their legendary ex-player who went on and coached their rival Inter for two seasons. Now as a coach of Napoli, Conte will try to bring the Naples based club back to the top.
Always quiet, never with big announcements but with big results — Atalanta must not be overlooked. Current Europa League Champions finished 4 th last season, right behind Inter, Milan and Juventus, challenging them for 2 nd place right till the end. They made some changes to the team, but the leaders remained. Atalanta had to make big purchases this summer — striker Mateo Retegui came from Genoa for 22 million euros and attacking-midfielder Charles De Ketelaere came from Milan for also 22 mil. Also, Nicolò Zaniolo was loaned from Galatasaray, so Atalanta will again be strong contender.
Two city rivals from Rome, Lazio and Roma, would once again like to join the big boys on top of the league. But there is always something missing. Daniele De Rossi remains at Roma’s helm, with some big newcomers in the dressing room. Artem Dovbyk from Girona, Matías Soulé from Juventus and Enzo Le Fée from Stade Rennais — all together worth nearly 80 million euros. There are higher expectations than last season for the club.
Lazio finished 7 th last season, somewhat of a disappointment after they finished 2 nd in season before. Marco Baroni is the new coach, but the transfer season wasn’t strong enough to put Lazio in the challenger’s position. Mattéo Guendouzi stayed at the club, after a loan spell from Marseille, and other than Loum Tchaouna, 20-years-old right winger who came from Salernitana, it seems that there aren’t many other big newcomers to help Lazio come closer to the top.
Comparing all five big leagues, Italian Serie A statistically had least goals scored per match and least big chances created. Football style mostly focused on defense will enter one more, hopefully attractive and interesting season.
