For anyone who's interested, here's a quick overview at this year's Serie A.
(bolded: new players)
Juventus (unfortunately) is the clear cut favourite; they won last year's "scudetto" and they also improved some spots. The difference is that last year they didn't have any international tournament and that made their life easier. Now they have the CL, which will take a lot of energies. But their rivals are still not on par.
5-3-2
Buffon
Bonucci -- Barzagli -- Chiellini
Lichtsteiner - Marchisio - Pirlo - Vidal - Asamoah
Vucinic --- Giovinco/Matri
Napoli looks like the main rival for the scudetto, even though they lost Lavezzi to PSG without bringing in a top player, but rather a (very) promising youngster in Insigne. They renewed Cavani's contract for 5 years with a release clause of 60 millions.
3-5-1-1
De Sanctis
Campagnaro -- Cannavaro -- Aronica
Maggio - Behrami - Inler - Hamsik - Zuniga
--------- Insigne
Cavani ---
Inter has made a well thought out transfer session, getting rid of heavy contracts of some of their old "Triplete" guys. They are definitely more solid than last year, but they need to find consistency under young coach Stramaccioni.
4-3-2-1
Handanovic
Zanetti - Silvestre - Ranocchia - Pereira
Guarin -- Gargano -- Cambiasso
Sneijder ----- Palacio/Cassano
Milito
The above three teams look like the ones that can battle for the scudetto.
Next tier includes Milan, Roma, Lazio, Fiorentina and maybe Udinese. I'll present only Milan because it's the most well known internationally, and Fiorentina because, well, it's my team.
Milan seems to be in a steep decline. They sold Ibra and Thiago Silva for financial reasons, but they failed to replace them appropriately. Pazzini was brought in anyway, who is a striker that can ensure 12-15 goals per season if playing regularly. De Jong and Bojan Krkic are last minute additions, and while nice, they don't fill their needs. And Pato is always injured... he's so frail that he could break his hand by giving a high-five.
4-3-1-2
Abbiati
De Sciglio - Mexes/Bonera - Acerbi - Antonini
Montolivo - De Jong - Nocerino
Boateng
Pazzini ----- Robinho/El Shaarawy
Fiorentina have dramatically improved since last year's risked relegation. They brought in a young and very good coach in Montella who shapes his teams in order to control possession. Quality players were brought in such as Borja Valero, Pizarro, Aquilani, Mati Fernandez. And they rebuilt the defense completely. With this premises, it was possible to keep Jovetic from the lures of Man City (while the outher young star, Nastasic, was sold for a very good 16 million+Savic)...
The biggest problem is consistency (they are an almost completely new team) and the lack of a proper striker, since the ludicrous Berbatov affair ended up bad for Fiorentina. They called up old man Luca Toni to give a hand, but the starting 9 will be El Hamdaoui who is a bit unproven and not a real striker.
3-5-2
Viviano
Roncaglia -- G.Rodriguez -- Tomovic/Savic
Cuadrado - B.Valero - Pizarro - Aquilani - Pasqual
--------- Jovetic
El Hamdaoui ---
And here's
Roma, which seems to be quite popular here on ISH :) and for a reason, they will surely be very entertaining to watch this year with Zeman as their coach.
4-3-3
Stekelenburg
Piris --- Burdisso --- Castan --- Balzaretti
De Rossi -- Tachtsidis/Bradley -- Florenzi/Pjanic
Destro/Lamela -- Osvaldo -- Totti
inb4 "tl;dr, who cares about Serie A anyways"
Re: 2012-2013 English Premier League Thread (La Liga, Serie A, etc.)
