It is an imperfect measure of a league’s strength. An iceberg appraisal limited to the bit above the waterline. But considering the tendency to predict the break-up of mainland European teams amid the almost irresistible gravitational pull of the Premier League and the seemingly infinite wealth from finite resources over in the Gulf, it is perhaps surprising that only one of the winners of Serie A’s six end-of-season awards for 2022-23 has since left the league.
Kim Min-jae, voted the Serie A defender of the year, moved to Bayern Munich less than a year after ebulliently performing Gangnam Style at his Napoli initiation following a transfer from Fenerbahce in Turkey.
The Athletic predicted Kim would be the most vulnerable player at the new Italian champions for the simple reason a buy-out clause included in his contract set the price and cut Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis out of any negotiation. That’s something anyone interested in the division’s reigning MVP Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Capocannoniere Victor Osimhen wishes were true in both their cases too. When the Saudi Arabians came in with an offer for Osimhen, his agent was already deeply engaged in amicable talks with De Laurentiis about a new contract, discussions which ultimately hinge on the insertion of such a clause.
For now, the stretchy Nigeria international is staying, along with the league’s other prize winners; goalkeeper of the year Ivan Provedel, midfielder of the year Nicolo Barella and young player of the year Nicolo Fagioli. Fans will have their own ideas about how worthy those players were of their respective awards. Most debatable, at least to this correspondent, was Fagioli’s inclusion ahead of the more decisive Rasmus Hojlund and Lazar Samardzic, not to mention fellow Italians including Destiny Udogie, Tommaso Baldanzi and Giorgio Scalvini.
The wider point here is the perception of retention and whether it holds or not.
Two of Barella’s predecessors as midfielder of the year, Marcelo Brozovic and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, did head off to the Saudi Pro League this summer. Romelu Lukaku, a former Serie A MVP, was expected to rejoin Inter on a permanent basis but now finds himself in a largely self-inflicted state of limbo called Cobham. Edin Dzeko, who in hindsight Inter Milan should maybe have renewed, packed up his goals and took them to Fenerbahce, another ex-Capocannoniere gone from the Italian top flight.
Some of these players stayed in Serie A longer than expected — for years, Lazio priced Milinkovic-Savic out of the market using Paul Pogba’s move back to Manchester United as a financial benchmark. Often, these things depend on the owner. Lazio’s Claudio Lotito isn’t easy to sit across the table with. The same goes for De Laurentiis, who resisted offers to sell Kalidou Koulibaly for summer after summer, valuing the centre-back, then at his peak, so highly as to set unrealistic expectations for a buyer — a pattern of behaviour now repeating itself with Osimhen.
Then there are the one-and-done opportunities, the get-rich-quick jobs clubs like to flip.
Among them, only Kim picked up an accolade and, truth be told, once his agent succeeded in obtaining a release clause, the situation was out of Napoli’s control. The moves of Andre Onana and then Hojlund from Serie A to Manchester United were different.
A free agent when joining them from Ajax last July, anyone familiar with Inter’s strained financial situation could quite easily predict Onana’s swift exit, because the proceeds of any sale would be all profit and constitute a tremendous accounting benefit. As for Hojlund, the chance to make a multiple of five on an investment made at the end of last summer was frankly too good for Atalanta to turn down.
It’s arguably the sale of the summer in Serie A, bettering Sandro Tonali’s surprise choice to abandon AC Milan, the club he supports, for a huge salary hike at Newcastle United. He follows Udogie to the Premier League, in the latter’s case an agreement the rampaging Udinese wing-back agreed with Tottenham a year ago, when the likes of Gianluca Scamacca and Wilfried Gnonto were also moving to England, before a final season back in Udine on loan.
It begs the question: who are the stars you should be following in Serie A this season and why?
Here are some suggestions.
Vlahovic, Osimhen, Leao, Rabiot: Can they back it up?
A year is a long time in football.
Last summer, Dusan Vlahovic was considered the present and the future of goalscoring in Serie A, the player best-placed to replace the generation of Ciro Immobile, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Dzeko and Olivier Giroud. Juventus made that extra effort to beat Arsenal to his signing 18 months ago, and coach Max Allegri even put him in the same conversation as Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland as one of the strikers who’ll define the next decade in European football.
However, a niggling injury and Allegri’s tactics contributed to an unexpected dip in Vlahovic’s form.
All of a sudden, Osimhen became that player. The brittleness that had characterised his first couple of years in Naples was managed better. The Nigerian became the first African player to top Italy’s scoring charts and the most prolific African ever to step foot in Serie A, surpassing a certain George Weah.
The questions I have: is this now the rule for Osimhen, or was that glorious season an exception? Is a Vlahovic-style blip on the cards? Can he show the consistency we’ve come to expect of Lautaro Martinez, Immobile and even Domenico Berardi year in, year out? How much will the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in January and February take out of him?
It’s a big year for Osimhen, as it is for team-mate Kvaratskhelia.
Arguably no one since Kaka at Milan in 2003-04 has had the impact the Georgian did in his first season. His zig-zagging unpredictability and telekinesis with Osimhen were breathtaking until about April, when opponents got wiser and started doubling and tripling up on him. Kvaratskhelia didn’t score or assist in the final 11 league games — a stage of the season when, in fairness, the title race was already run.
Zooming out of Naples for a moment, Rafael Leao had a statistically better season than he did when he was named Serie A MVP 12 months earlier after Milan won the league. But it didn’t always feel that way domestically in the weeks after the World Cup break. Contract extensions are rarely looked at in the same way as signings, but they should be. Keeping Leao is huge for Milan and for the league. There’s still more to come, particularly as new team-mates Christian Pulisic and Samuel Chukwueze should draw defenders away from him.
On a smaller scale, I never thought I’d feel the same about Adrien Rabiot at Juventus. But last year, a contract year for the Frenchman, was his best in Italy. He has rolled his deal over for another season. The motivation sparking him should be the same. Let’s see if he performs to a high level again.
Is another Hojlund out there?
One of the recent trends in Serie A is for a club to make a big windfall on a striker moving to the Premier League, only for the player to end up back in Serie A a year later. It happened with Lukaku and now Scamacca. Manchester United fans will be hoping history doesn’t repeat itself with Hojlund. Too much is invested in him — although the same could be said of the €115million Chelsea lavished on Lukaku.
The first place to look for a new Hojlund is in Bergamo, the city he’s leaving behind, via the succession plan activated by Atalanta. El Bilal Toure became the most expensive player in the club’s history on his arrival from La Liga for €28million. The Mali international, who won the Under-20 AFCON not so long ago, signs from Almeria, a club with a track record of spotting big-money strikers nice and early: they also did it with Darwin Nunez, now at Liverpool. Toure scored seven goals in 15 starts for a struggling team who ended up avoiding relegation by one point, including their winner against title-bound Barcelona. He would no doubt have got into double figures without the injury that kept him out for two months from the middle of March.
Overall, Atalanta’s summer business looks excellent. Hojlund’s club-record fee generated the liquidity needed to beat Roma and Inter to the signature of Scamacca, who leaves the Premier League after a single underwhelming season at West Ham.
This is a make-or-break year for him.
Scamacca has lost his place in the Italy team and needs to win it back ahead of the European Championship next summer. Playing in an uber-attacking side coached by Gian Piero Gasperini is a dream for strikers, even if Atalanta’s chance creation is down on the Papu Gomez, Josip Ilicic and Robin Gosens years.
So Scamacca has no excuse. Ace this test and he probably succeeds Immobile as Italy’s first-choice striker and gets a chance to move to one of Serie A’s big three. Flunk it, and he maybe goes the way of Simone Zaza and Andrea Belotti, oscillating between the Torinos and Bolognas of this world.
Thuram, Ndicka, Aouar and the quick flips
As a free transfer from Ajax, Onana went from nought to €55million in less than a year. He won’t be the last fast and floggable player Inter’s chief executive Beppe Marotta moves in and out again for a quick accounting benefit. The club’s financial situation makes working the Bosman bargain basement an essential part of transfer strategy.
Bear that in mind while watching Marcus Thuram this season.
Serie A is the fathers and sons league. Thuram was born in Parma, where his old man, Lilian, formed one of the best centre-back partnerships in Serie A history with Fabio Cannavaro, and the experience of watching Serie A in 2023 does, in one respect, feel like following it in the 1990s as the names of Weah, Chiesa, Maldini, Birindelli and Simeone trip off commentators’ tongues. Even Francesco Totti’s lad, Cristian, has left Roma’s academy to train with promoted Frosinone.
But we digress.
Thuram will compete for a place up front at Inter this season. He joins them as a free agent on the back of his best year in the Bundesliga, having finally put a serious knee injury behind him. Either side of representing France at the World Cup, the 26-year-old scored 13 times in the league for Borussia Monchengladbach, making his mark in wins over Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich.
If he does well, and then has a good Euros, Inter will have the chance to make a quick profit next summer. Perhaps by that time, a possible change of owner could have changed the club’s circumstances.
I’d cast a cynical eye on Roma as well.
The financial fair play straitjacket applied by UEFA on the back of the club’s €127million transfer spend in Jose Mourinho’s first summer has limited what they can do and forced them onto an Inter-like tack.
Eintracht Frankfurt’s Europa League-winning centre-back Evan Ndicka and Lyon’s silky playmaker Houssem Aouar arrive on free transfers and while he has insisted that Roma retain their best players (take Paulo Dybala joining on a Bosman last summer and staying), Mourinho himself may not be around next summer as this is the last year of his contract. Ndicka and Aouar would be relatively easy money-spinners.
Retegui, Raspadori and the internationals
Next summer, assuming they qualify, Italy will defend their title as European champions in Germany, a place evocative of the 2006 World Cup triumph. Simultaneously, the United States is set to stage the next edition of the Copa America. This promises to provoke some fairly interesting motivational dynamics within Serie A this season and not just for Tim Weah at Juventus and Pulisic and Yunus Musah at Milan.
Here’s what’s at stake for Italy:
Immobile can make history by matching 1950s star Gunnar Nordahl as the only player to be crowned Capocannoniere five times. But the most prolific Italian striker of the last decade is coming off an injury-hit year. We’ve mentioned the opportunity this presents for Scamacca. But he isn’t the only one coveting the Italy No 9 jersey: Osimhen’s AFCON winter is a chance for Giacomo Raspadori to get more game time for the champions, Udinese have also brought Lorenzo Lucca back from Ajax and Samuele Mulattieri, the best young striker in Serie B last season, will develop at Sassuolo.
Then there’s Mateo Retegui, the player who took over from Scamacca and Raspadori last season as Immobile’s stand-in for the national team.
Retegui was a controversial pick, as he’d never played in Italy before and didn’t speak Italian. He was called up from Tigre in Argentina in March based on his form and Sicilian ancestry. Genoa have now brought him over to Serie A and, as with the national team, he has wasted no time in making an impression. Retegui scored on his debut for Italy, then did so for Genoa in the first minute of his first appearance in the Coppa Italia last week. He has been welcomed as a new Diego Milito.
While Retegui is no longer eligible for Argentina, one would still expect Lionel Scaloni, head coach of the World Cup and Copa America holders, to be in Italy more than ever this season.
Beyond Martinez at Inter and Dybala at Roma, there are some new Muchachos to consider for the spots up front in his team. Giovanni Simeone has a remarkable goal-per-minute ratio for Napoli and will see himself as Osimhen’s Napoli deputy, not Raspadori.
Excitingly, Serie A has welcomed a couple of other Argentine forwards to the mix as well.
Immobile’s ailments and a close encounter with a tram, which slammed into his car in May, pushed Lazio into sourcing another striker. Valentin Castellanos, known to all as Taty, has left the City Football Group network, not for Palermo — their Italian second-division club — but the Eternal City. The 2020-21 MLS champion and Golden Boot winner arrives after a season with Spain’s Girona, in which he made it into double figures thanks, in part, to scoring a poker (that’s four goals! Four!) in a memorable April win over then-La Liga and European champions Real Madrid.
Scaloni will no doubt be a guest of Fiorentina’s technical director Nicolas Burdisso too, as Nicolas Gonzalez is no longer the only excuse for him to catch a game at the Artemio Franchi.
If Gonzalez stays past the closing of the transfer window, his job will be to create for countryman and new team-mate Lucas Beltran, whose 12 goals just helped River Plate to their 38th Argentine league title. Beltran’s tenacity meshes well with coach Vincenzo Italiano’s up-and-at-’em style, although he’ll have to dislodge a proven Serie A goalscorer in Mbala N’Zola, who worked with Italiano at Spezia.
Not to worry though, there should be plenty of game time to go around — Fiorentina reached a couple of finals last year and are back in the Europa Conference League for 2023-24 after UEFA banned Juventus from Europe for one season.
Weah, McKennie, Pulisic, Musah and U.S. stars in stripes
There’s Weah and Weston McKennie in black and white. And there’s Pulisic and Musah in red and black. Serie A is trying to break America like never before: Juventus and Milan toured there in pre-season. Serie A values CBS as arguably its most important international broadcast partner.
Weah has, for now, been Juventus’ only signing of note, other than tying Rabiot down to a new deal and turning Arkadiusz Milik’s loan into a permanent transfer. His name carries expectation in Italy, as his father George became the only African player to win the Ballon d’Or while at Milan. Pulisic has so far attracted the most attention and has had a good pre-season.
Musah probably has more tools than any of them to adapt the quickest. He spent part of his childhood in Italy and speaks the language fluently, although the Milan dressing room is so international these days that Italian is non-essential. Harder to jump than the language barrier is this enduring trend of players struggling in their first season with Milan. It happened to Leao, then Tonali and more recently Charles De Ketelaere.
Unlike De Ketelaere, who only signed in August last year, Pulisic was able to go on the pre-season tour, bond with his new team-mates and assimilate Pioli’s ideas. It gives him a head start even over Chukwueze, the dazzling winger signed from Villarreal, who stayed back home at their Milanello base and worked out on his own as the team barnstormed around the USA. Chukwueze has all the tricks to be this season’s Kvaratskhelia.
Other things to look for
Napoli found Koulibaly, then replaced him with Kim. So their scouts Maurizio Micheli and Leonardo Mantovani definitely know how to spot a centre-back. Amir Rrahmani’s new partner, 22-year-old Natan, cost €10million from Red Bull Bragantino in Brazil, and there’s more to him than just a palindrome. He could follow countryman Gleison Bremer, of Juventus, into the Brazilian national team.
Sassuolo are doing what Sassuolo do; signing top, young Italian talent. Whoever ends up being the new Italy coach will be thankful.
Don’t lose sight of Lecce. Pantaleo Corvino, the art-collecting genius who has uncovered many a hidden gem in his time as a sporting director, has just sold club captain Morten Hjulmand to Sporting Lisbon for €21million, two and a half years after paying Austria’s Admira Wacker €170,000 for him. The more I think about it in relative terms, maybe that’s the sale of the summer in Serie A. Now you just watch Corvino go find another Vlahovic or Stevan Jovetic with the proceeds.
The Atalanta setup seems made for Milan loanee De Ketelaere who, psychologically at least, might get back to his best pulling on, a logo or two aside, the same blue and black kit he wore as he shone for previous club Club Bruges.
Last but not least, Genoa return to Serie A after a year away with big ‘Monza 2022-23’ energy and, like them, should stay up comfortably. Goalkeeper Josep Martinez, a full Spain international, and centre-back Alan Matturro, an Under-20 World Cup winner with Uruguay this summer, are very good.
(Top photos: Getty Images)