Of all the major European leagues, Serie A probably has the strangest relationship with its own past. There was a time when Italy was the place to play football. During the 1990s, Roberto Baggio, Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane and a ridiculous collection of the world’s best players called the league home. Even American Alexi Lalas, who is by no means an “icon,” chose Serie A instead of anywhere else on the continent.
Things have changed over the last couple of decades. The Premier League has elevated itself above the Italian flight as the richest and most-watched competition in the world, and the days when seemingly every superstar eventually wound up in Milan, Turin or Rome are long gone. Italian clubs can still compete in Europe — Inter played in the Champions League final two years ago — but Serie A no longer occupies the place it once did at the center of the football universe.
The Italian national team has provided an even more painful reminder of that decline. Italy failed to qualify for the World Cup for the third consecutive time this summer, meaning that as the rest of its European peers watched their countries gallivant around North America in an attempt to claim glory, Italians sat at home hoping Jannik Sinner would win Wimbledon.
He did, for what it’s worth.
But Serie A is still massive, and there’s plenty to like about the league that kicks off another season this weekend. Inter is the obvious favorite, Como has somehow gone from bankruptcy to the Champions League in a decade and most of the traditional powers are somewhere between legitimate contenders and trying to figure out what the hell they’re doing.
Welcome to Italy.
Inter is Still the Team to Beat
Serie A hasn’t had a repeat champion this decade.
Juventus won in 2020, Inter in 2021, Milan in 2022, Napoli in 2023, and the trophy has continued bouncing around between Inter and Napoli ever since. That’s quite the change from the 2010s, when Juventus won nine straight and basically treated the Scudetto -- a widespread synonym for winning the Italian league -- like something that belonged in its trophy cabinet by default.
