5 reasons why Juventus will lose the Serie A title to Inter Milan next season
The unthinkable almost happened last season as Inter Milan came extremely close to upsetting the Juventus apple cart in Serie A, with the latter only winning the league title by a whisker.
Though Juventus clinched their ninth Serie A title on the trot, they were almost denied this feat by a resurgent Inter Milan, coached by the experienced master tactician Antonio Conte, who will be gunning for the title with renewed vigour this season.
Here's why we think Juventus will be denied a 10th straight Scudetto by Conte's Inter Milan.
5 reasons why Inter Milan will beat Juventus to the Serie A next season
#5 Andrea Pirlo has no real coaching experience
When Juventus went to club legend Andrea Pirlo to steer them to their Champions League dream in the coming season, most experts were shocked.
Pirlo was indeed one of the greatest footballers of his generation and knows the DNA of the team for whom he won four Serie As. However, the former regista has absolutely zero coaching experience at the highest level and was coach of the Juventus U23 team for nine days before being made the manager of the first team.
With him expected to deliver on all fronts and to manage a team of veritable superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo, he will clearly undergo a baptism by fire in his first coaching job.
#4 An unsettled team
Ever since Juventus moved away from the pragmatic but highly successful tactics of Massimiliano Allegri to attempt a more adventurous and aesthetic style, they have looked like an unsettled team.
Though Cristiano Ronaldo has fit in brilliantly into Serie A, the team, which was coached by Maurizio Sarri last season, struggled to adapt to his possession-based Sarriball system that required rigorous effort from the players.
Juventus stars struggled to adapt to the system, as confessed by Sarri himself, and stayed afloat in the league thanks to goals from Ronaldo and Paulo Dybala, who had rediscovered his mojo. An unconvincing Bianconeri just about scraped to the Serie A title and looked at their uninspired worst against Lyon in the Champions League second leg.
Long-term midfield fulcrum Miralem Pjanic has, meanwhile, moved on to Barcelona, with Arthur Melo going in the opposite direction.
That's the biggest central midfield addition that the club have done in recent times, with them focusing on getting more strikers with a past-his-prime Luis Suarez being heavily chased.
It is not yet clear what kind of strategy Pirlo will employ with the players already befuddled by two contrasting styles used in two consecutive seasons by two very different managers (Allegri and Sarri).