Serie A: Rafa’s new-look super-bench XI, and other oddities

The Serie A season is about to kick off. The randomly-scribbled rant that follows shall appear either deviously prescient or total bunkum to your eyes, depending on how well Marotta & company do their thing.

The big guns first

Napoli are fast turning into an assembly of benchwarmers. Slightly harsh there, but their new recruits are excellent players who for some strange reason were stuck in the wrong place, and largely on the bench. I’ve previously opined that Rafa seems to prefer players from his former clubs more, with the result that three Real Madrid men have crossed the Alps this season and another, Alvaro Arbeloa, may join them at Naples soon. Liverpool have already been raided once, for Pepe Reina, and Martin Skrtel may be the next to follow.

Meanwhile, Rafa’s revolution at Napoli continues full-speed, with the news that Samuel Eto’o – who wants to play serious football again – is prepared to take an 80% pay cut on his seven-star, oil-fuelled salary and come to Naples, where he will earn a mere hundred grand every week. Stuff that fairy tales are made of, I tell you.

Juventus are continuing with their slow-and-steady policy of acquisitions. Already, Arturo Vidal is being hailed as the next Roy Keane: a midfielder who can win the ball back and stick to it tighter than a leech in heat. Keeping him in the black and white will be Antonio Conte’s biggest challenge this summer, as Real Madrid have come sniffing a few times already.

Comparisons are being drawn between Paul Pogba and Zinedine Zidane, while Carlos Tevez and Mirko Vucinic have forged a good understanding in front of goal. Fernando Llorente gives them the option to play long-ball football, with Andrea Pirlo firing one of his homing missiles into the Spaniard’s beanstalk frame. Nicklas Bendtner has been jettisoned. All in all, a decent summer at Turin.

One Milan club is in a stew of its own making…

For a long time, Inter Milan were the Liverpool of Italy; the inexplicable underachievers of their league, who last won a league title in the 80s and despite a string of big purchases (remember Christian Vieri?), never made it back up there. Then came the Calciopoli scandal, which handed them a brief period of success and a continental Treble. Regular service has resumed, and they’re underachieving again. Note, I omitted ‘inexplicable’.

To be fair, losing their three best strikers to injury after the Jan 2013 transfer window closed was unfortunate (they nosedived from 4th to 9th in the league), but for all Inter watchers, a collapse was only a matter of time. Their wastefulness is the main reason. Paying an estimated 8 million euros in annual salary to a 34-year old Diego Milito is but one example of their profligacy – Juve’s highest earner, new buy Carlos Tevez, is five years younger than Milito and earns 110,000 euros a week. While other Italian clubs have wised up and started looking at players’ actual worth, a decrepit Inter are still stuck in the dark ages, and – even worse – are yet to figure out how they got there.

…while the other team from Milan cooks up a messy fondue that, somehow, is just good enough

Last season, AC Milan put on a stellar imitation of a certain North London club we all know and love (*sneeze*), in all matters footballing and financial.

By August 2012, they’d sold practically their entire squad (including some names we grew up with). Their new-look team floundered at the start of the season, doing its best impression of a lizard trapped at the bottom of a wet pail. They stumbled their way out of the relegation zone by October and then, displaying gumption, raw grit and a re-invented Mario Balotelli, proceeded to beat the s*** out of everyone else en route returning to the Champions League.

And, while selling your best players before scratching and clawing your way back to where you were the last time is a Wenger trademark, Milan have taken the Arsenal example, scoffed at it and produced a superior version before which even the great Arsene Wenger must doff his cap.

This season, with Balotelli, El-Sharaawy and potentially Adam Ljajic, Milan will start with one of the best forward lines in Italy. But that is still in the realm of conjecture. Ljajic is still at Fiorentina, Keisuke Honda is still at CSKA Moscow and his contract will take its own sweet time to run down.

What ho! I spoke of both Napoli and Inter, but neglected to mention the most bizarre move this managerial silly season! Good luck, Walter Mazzarri. You’ll need it where you are.

Can’t fault him for effort. It’s been a month at Inter and every day he tries his damnedest to smile.

Coming next week, a sequel on Fiorentina, Roma and Udinese laying claim to the throne so precariously occupied by AC Milan. Needless to say, that follows only if I get comments on this one!