There is an alternate reality in which Pep Guardiola, in his new role as coach of Italy, would have been looking with his assistant, presumably Roberto Baggio, at which games to attend this weekend, as the new season in Serie A gets underway.
Inter-Monza on Saturday, Roby? Maybe Atalanta-Sassuolo on Sunday? “(Guardiola) was very tempted,” Paolo Maldini claimed to Corriere della Sera.
One of Maldini’s 18 days as the Italian Football Federation’s new technical director was spent in Barcelona, where he tried to persuade Guardiola to leave his sabbatical and save not only the national team but an entire system from itself. In Maldini’s mind, Guardiola could have been to Italian football what Johan Cruyff had been to the Spanish game. The scale of the task awaiting them was daunting. They would have had to fight a culture war, one Maldini anticipated might take 10 years. But it’d be worth it.
Talks were detailed. They looked at what, if anything, was coming through and found some encouragement. While attention focused on Italy’s third consecutive absence from the World Cup, the Under-17s won the Euros for the second time in three seasons. “(Guardiola) came very close to accepting,” Maldini said. “He even began scribbling some line-ups on pieces of paper.”
Alas, the move didn’t happen. Maldini and his strategic advisor, Leonardo, quit when their backup plan Andrea Pirlo met with disapproval from the establishment on the grounds that he was a global ambassador for a Russian betting platform. The dietrologia — an Italian belief that there is always something more behind a story — was rife. Apparently, the Serie A clubs wanted Antonio Conte. This was news to Maldini, as the chairmen and presidents never expressed a preference for him.
The new FIGC president, Giovanni Malago, meanwhile, advocated for his close friend Roberto Mancini. He had always had him at the top of his list. When Mancini got the job three years after quitting to take charge of Saudi Arabia — an act of treason for some — it was presented as the victory of a system unwilling to reform itself.
A contrite Mancini owned up to his mistake, likening the national team to a woman he’d unforgivably cheated on. “It’s like when you lose the love of your life,” he said, grateful for the chance to win her back.
Italy’s failure to qualify for the 2026 World Cup overshadowed the Serie A summer (Getty Images)
Failing to qualify for Qatar 2022 had acted like one of those memory wiping neuralysers in Men in Black, erasing all the good work Mancini did up until that point, such as winning the Euros for the first time in half a century and setting a 37-game unbeaten record Spain only just broke by winning the World Cup final. Perhaps a little harshly, his return has done little to stoke enthusiasm or make fans optimistic that a change is coming.
The recycling of the same old faces in Italian football was already remarked upon last year. It is a little less pronounced going into the new season. Recent title-winners such as Antonio Conte and Stefano Pioli, for instance, are out of work. And yet Max Allegri has been rewarded with the Napoli job swiftly after getting the sack by Milan. Rino Gattuso, who oversaw Italy’s play-off defeat to Bosnia in Zenica, is now in charge of Lazio. Maurizio Sarri is Atalanta’s third coach in a year since Gian Piero Gasperini left for Roma. The cliche of Italy changing in order to stay the same rings true.
One of the more progressive and successful up-and-coming coaches, Vincenzo Italiano, has, like Roberto De Zerbi before him, left Italy to get a job at a big club, leaving Bologna for Besiktas (having also spoken to Benfica) after Napoli decided to go with a big name like Allegri in their centenary year.
As with the despair around a perceived lack of talent, the view of stunted renewal in Italian football is, however, only partial. This is the summer of the first €100m Italian player (€108m to be precise). It should be a source of pride that Sandro Tonali has made it in the Premier League. His next move after Newcastle was not a return to Serie A (financially impossible). But a move within to De Zerbi’s Tottenham.
Sandro Tonali is the first Italian player to move for more than €100m (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
Another trend is consolidating itself too. England likes Italian players. After Tonali, Riccardo Calafiori, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Michael Kayode and more, the best Italians kids are heading to the Premier League earlier than ever. Liverpool bought Giovanni Leoni last year. Chelsea signed Marco Palestra for €57m this year. This perhaps won’t make you feel good about Serie A, but it should make you feel better about Italian football. For the first time ever, the league’s elite big three are not the automatic first choice of the next generation, particularly if they are developed outside of Juventus, Inter and Milan and not in-house.
Inter’s president Giuseppe Marotta was disappointed. He claimed Palestra’s agent Alessandro Lucci broke his word, something Lucci vehemently denied. As with Leoni’s former club, Parma, the fact is Palestra’s parent club, Atalanta, could make more money from England than Italy. The Premier League has spent more than €2.5bn this summer; more or less the same as Italy, Germany, France and Spain combined.
For all Serie A’s flaws, chief among them the shortcomings in international TV revenue and infrastructure, it does not lack investment. In gross terms, a billion has been pumped into the transfer market, the highest figure outside the Premier League. Thirteen clubs are foreign-owned. The promoted cohort — Venezia, Monza and Frosinone — are all American-owned. None of them have spent like Como upon their top-flight return. But one of Venezia’s many co-owners, Drake, managed to persuade Tim Leiweke to buy in. Leiweke, for the uninitiated, is the guy who brought David Beckham to MLS.
If you’re chuntering: “Well, that’s just what the league needs! More prestige players in the twilight of their careers!” Fear not. OK, Inter have signed John Stones this summer. But he is, for now, an exception. There has, as yet, been no repeat of last year when Luka Modric, Edin Dzeko, Ciro Immobile and Jamie Vardy joined or re-joined the league.
Instead, clubs have got quite extravagant about skilful socks-down youth, bringing in a cluster of sprightly one-v-one players in a man-for-man league with the deepest of low blocks known to football. Juventus not only kept their No 10, Kenan Yildiz, but added another in Kerim Alajbegovic. Como retained Nico Paz and convinced the jinking playmaker Mattia Liberali to play by the lake instead of returning to Milan. Roma extended Paulo Dybala and signed Rodrigo Mora from Porto, who is optimistically projected by some to be a future €100m signing for PSG.
Nico Paz remains as one of Serie A’s star attractions in 2026-27 (Piero Cruciati / AFP via Getty Images)
Of the clubs celebrating their centenary, none have gone bigger than Fiorentina. They have mirrored new sporting director Fabio Paratici’s former club Tottenham in going from a too close-for-comfort relegation battle to a major splurge. Paratici has swiped the Commisso family credit card over and over again, acquiring Arthur Atta, one of the best midfielders in the league, and Christ Inao Oulai from Trabzonspor, whose fee is effectively paying Mohamed Salah’s wages.
No signing, however, has captured the imagination quite like the loan of Franco Mastantuono from Real Madrid. Along with Paz, he will have to shoulder the unenviable creative burden for Argentina once Lionel Messi retires from international duty. I was at the Superclásico in Buenos Aires when he scored a mind-bending free kick for River, one of the best goals I’ve ever seen live. Florence loves its artists and Mastantuono’s year-long residency at the Artemio Franchi brings genuine excitement.
Less than a fortnight of the window remains, teams are still incomplete and coaches are pressuring sporting directors. But here’s the lay of the land. There is some new blood in coaching. True, an old guard, long-in-the-tooth still exists. At the same time, there is curiosity around Carlos Cuesta, 31, and how he copes with another overhaul at Parma. Then there’s Cesc Fabregas, 39, and his chances of mounting a title challenge while overseeing Como’s first Champions League campaign. If you’re a Serie A sicko like me, you ask:
Is Ignazio Abate, 39, worth getting excited about at Torino, having led Juve Stabia to the second division play-offs?
Can Domenico Tedesco, 40, maintain the standards set by Thiago Motta and Italiano at Bologna?
How good is Sassuolo’s new hire Alberto Aquilani, 42, given his success at youth level with Fiorentina and unexpected run to the play-off final with Catanzaro?
Two appointments, in particular, stand out. One is Fabio Grosso at Fiorentina. Maldini name-checked Grosso as one of his other alternative candidates for the Italy job should he have stayed on as technical director. The 2006 World Cup winner has quietly made a name for himself, gradually progressing, without taking big leaps forward. He gained promotion with Frosinone, then Sassuolo. Now Paratici has chosen him to push Fiorentina into the European places.
The other is Ruben Amorim at Milan. If you mitigate for Amorim at Manchester United — he initially took over mid-season with a squad unsuited to his style at a club overhauling its executive structure — he is still less than two years removed from being one of the most exciting coaches in Europe, having led Sporting to their first title in nearly two decades.
Can Ruben Amorim reboot his managerial career at Milan? (Janelle St Pierre/Getty Images)
He takes over a squad familiar with playing three at-the-back but with the shackles on. Milan’s owner Gerry Cardinale wants him to take them off and win. To help him do so, Cardinale has made the two most expensive signings in the club’s history, paying PSG €74m for striker Goncalo Ramos, and Strasbourg around €50m for versatile Diego Moreira, not to mention one of the best centre-backs in the league, Mario Gila, who isn’t far off from playing for world champions Spain.
It is a drastic step-change in how Milan are run, with Cardinale spending more time on the ground than any owner in the league in order to put things right. Having sacked the old executive team the day after last season, he personally led the search for a new coach and has brokered the aforementioned transfers. Milan were in a title challenge until March with the handbrake on last season. Returning to the top four is an aim too cautious for the hands-on Cardinale, who aspires to much more.
For what they’re worth, the betting markets are more sceptical. Inter remain overwhelming favourites having done the double with a rookie coach, declining goalkeeper, under-fire centre-back, intermittent appearances from Denzel Dumfries and Marcus Thuram and a patchy record in big games. They will likely be as good, if not better, this season. The Italian core has had the summer off. Stones, if fit, could be a game-changer. The Balkan kids in midfield, Petar Sucic and Aleksandar Stankovic, can do to the midfield what Pio Esposito and Ange-Yoan Bonny do to the attack; rejuvenating it.
Andy Diouf is expected to step up, and Dumfries’ replacement Djed Spence is coming off an impressive World Cup with England. The pretenders to Inter’s crown must all score a lot more goals if they are to get near them.
Until the final fortnight of the season, Juventus were, from the moment Luciano Spalletti took over at the end of October, the second-best team in points-per-game and attacking output. Ultimately, they were undone by howlers from goalkeeper Michele Di Gregorio, poor refereeing (the Pierre Kalulu red in the Derby d’Italia forced IFAB to amend VAR protocol) and a couple of misfiring forwards.
Spalletti should make this team a force, particularly with Bremer fully back from an ACL tear, Jhon Lucumi next to him and Randal Kolo Muani in Turin for a second spell. The midfield still poses a conundrum. Douglas Luiz is back from his Premier League loans — and if anyone can make good on that investment, it’s Spalletti.
As for Napoli, if Kevin De Bruyne found Conte’s football hard going, wait until he has a season with Allegri.
Roma, meanwhile, continue to breach FFP, pay fines and carry on spending. Gasperini has been reunited with his old sporting director Tony D’Amico from Atalanta, having ousted Ricky Massara and Claudio Ranieri. A full season of Donyell Malen could make Roma a contender. Santiago Castro adds more precocious goals and the team as a whole will be far more in sync with Gasp’s methods than this time last year.
His old club Atalanta are arguably the most intriguing of whatever constitutes the Seven Sisters these days, as they are definitively breaking with the past. Unlike Ivan Juric and Raffaele Palladino, Sarri is no Gasperini disciple. He is 4-3-3, not 3-4-3. Zonal rather than man-for-man. Pre-season has been encouraging. Gianluca Scamacca and Giorgio Scalvini are fit again after ACL lay-offs. Lazar Samardzic is being reinvented, and Gianluca Gaetano could be one of those players Sarri forces you to see in a whole new light.
Gianluca Gaetano has moved from Cagliari to Atalanta this summer (Janelle St Pierre/Getty Images)
Overall, Italy’s top sides have to do much, much better in Europe this season. Last year was the first time Serie A did not have a representative in a UEFA final this decade. Inter’s exit to Bodo-Glimt still hurts, particularly after two Champions League finals in 2023 and 2025. Juventus and Milan have to go far in the Europa League. Atalanta can win the Conference League.
Elsewhere in Serie A, season ticket sales at Lazio were down 93 per cent at the end of July as fans continue to protest Claudio Lotito’s ownership. Suffering elimination to Mantova in the Coppa Italia hardly lifted the mood.
No one quite knows what to expect from Tedesco at Bologna, particularly after the departures of Lucumi, Remo Freuler and Castro. It’s a case of trust in Giovanni Sartori, one of the best sporting directors in the business. Udinese’s stability could result in another top-half finish.
Down the bottom, Venezia look the best bet of the promoted teams to stay up. Keep an eye on Akor Adams — the €16m signing combined for 15 goals for Sevilla and Nigeria last season.
With or without Guardiola, welcome back, Serie A.
