Serie A on the up as AS Roma and AC Milan threaten Juve’s crown

Ian Hawkey examines the Serie A landscape ahead of the league's kick-off, and finds Juventus' recent dominance masking a league-wide improvement that could see the title change hands.

Juventus players celebrate after winning the Italian Super Cup against Lazio in Shanghai earlier this month. The club are looking for their fifth straight scudetto in 2015/16. Johannes Eisele / AFP / Show more

Ahead of the start of the new Serie A season, which begins on Saturday, Ian Hawkey looks at some of the major talking points on the season ahead.

Have Juventus rejuvenated too far?

Juventus are chasing something achieved only twice in Serie A, five successive league titles. They have the extra motivation that the only club other than Juve, who were champions from 1931 to 1935, to have managed that are Inter Milan.

That was the Inter whose first championship of their run was the 2006 title, stripped from Juve because of the calciopoli scandal when the Turin side, among several other teams, were found guilty of rigging matches by picking favourable referees.

But as Inter, who faded suddenly after 2010, would testify, sustaining domestic domination into a fifth year means carefully balancing a reliance on established figures with some freshening up.

Juventus changed their coach a year ago, and Massimiliano Allegri brought to the job some qualities distinct to those of Antonio Conte, but his chief sergeants on the field were mostly those who had served his predecessor. Three very influential players have left this summer, transferred to destinations on three continents.

A Juventus without Andrea Pirlo’s passes, Arturo Vidal’s dynamism and Carlos Tevez’s industry and finishing will look quite different, for all that the arrivals of Sami Khedira, Mario Mandzukic, Alex Sandro and the exciting Argentinian striker Paulo Dybala have covered some of the departed stars’ positions.

Can Mihajlovic win over the milanisti?

AC Milan have a new coach, their fifth since Allegri departed at the beginning of 2014.

He is the man who once said he could never take charge of Milan because of his ties across the city. Sinisa Mihajlovic was an Inter player at the tail end of his long, distinguished career, and on the Inter coaching staff for two years after retiring as a tough, intelligent, free-kick-specialist of a defender.

Professional loyalties do shift easily from blue to red, and vice versa, in Milan of the modern era, though some fans will still be sceptical.

One thing on Mihajlovic’s side is that the past two experiments with former Milan players as coach have not been successful.

Clarence Seedorf took Milan to eighth place in 2014, Filippo Inzaghi to 10th last term.

Mihajlovic knows his task is to hoist them at least to third and back into the Uefa Champions League, a competition Luiz Adriano and Carlos Bacca, the punchy recruits for their new-look forward line, gave up by leaving their former clubs to join Milan.

Can Mancini shore up Inter’s back-line?

In their final three games last season Inter let in eight goals, their hopes of squeezing into a European competition dashed partly by their porous defence.

These are not the habits on which Roberto Mancini built his managerial reputation. Having returned to Inter mid-season in the last campaign, he cannot shoulder too much of the blame for that.

Inter have recruited a trio of defenders whose brief is to shore up the rearguard and better protect the talented Samir Handanovic in goal.

Miranda, the Brazilian loaned from Atletico Madrid and key to many of Atletico’s successes during the past three years, should suit Serie A. The centre-half will offer some threat at attacking set-pieces, too.

Jeison Murillo, 23 and formerly of Udinese and Granada, is a potential catch for Inter. He was voted Best Young Player at the Copa America this summer for his displays in the middle of Colombia’s defence.

At right-back, Martin Montoya has arrived on loan from Barcelona, where he grew up in the fabled academy but has struggled to impose himself in five years attached to the first team, understudying Dani Alves.

He needs to kick-start a career that featured a Spain call-up when he was just 20, but none in the four years since.

Can the veterans keep it up?

The captain of the defending champions, Gianluigi Buffon, will turn 38 in January. The leader of AS Roma, the team likeliest to pursue Juventus closest for the crown, is one Francesco Totti, who will celebrate his 39th birthday next month.

The title of Capocannoniere – leading scorer from the previous season – belongs jointly to Verona's Luca Toni, who will hope that by the time he enters his 40th year, next May, he will have scored a total of goals that he can respectably set alongside the 22 he registered in 2014/15 for Verona.

None of these middle-agers are ushering in thoughts of imminent retirement. While they do enhance the reputation of Serie A as a place where the diminishing effects of age can be concealed longer than in other major leagues, the enthusiasm and savvy of the likes of Totti and Toni are often a joy to watch and admire.

Meanwhile, the prospect of Miroslav Klose, 37, who is leading the line for Lazio in the Champions League, demands respect. The veteran German does show more and more symptoms of vulnerability, however, with his latest muscle strain likely to rule him out of next week's tightly poised second leg of Lazio's play-off against Bayer Leverkusen.

Is Serie A on the up?

With less than two weeks until the transfer window closes, Italy’s clubs have spent more money than any other country apart from England, whose Premier League is enjoying the bonanza of its latest, vast television rights deal.

The overall Serie A spend on players is approaching €700 million (Dh2.87bn), well up compared on most recent years and a sign that clubs who have embraced foreign investors – Roma, Inter and Milan – are benefiting from bigger budgets as a result.

Yet, while the traditional heavyweights flex their muscles, Serie A is as open to smaller clubs as it has been in 50 years.

Not since 1964 has a top-flight season begun with not one but two newcomers. Promoted Carpi and Frosinone have never been in this elite company, and they might wish they had timed their arrivals for one of those periods of leaner spending from the bigger clubs.

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