Serie A mailbag: Best hairstyle? Can Atalanta challenge? Chiesas best role?

With the Serie A transfer window now shut, the Milan derby on the horizon this weekend, we thought it was an opportune time for The Athletic’s James Horncastle to answer your key questions on the game in Italy.

Here he discusses Federico Chiesa’s move to Juventus, Atalanta’s title credentials and Italy’s perceived lack of top defenders…

Who has the best hairstyle in the Serie A? (Swasti M.)

I thought we’d start with the hard-hitting questions you need answers to, so thank you Swasti for pulling no punches and getting straight to what matters most. In case you hadn’t noticed, Andrea Pirlo is back in the league and his coiffure remains immaculate. Spezia’s Luca Mora has mastered the same look with a dishevelled twist and I, for one, respect that. Perhaps it’s a homage to the philosophers he studied at university. I’ve also got a lot of time for any top-flight footballer who turns up for training in a Fiat Punto as he used to at SPAL.

In terms of new recruits, surely I’m not alone in loving Victor Osimhen’s late-1990s Ibrahim Ba vibe? The standards are high this year even if memories of Roby Baggio’s divine ponytail continue to be egregiously dishonoured by Rodrigo Palacio.

Advertisement

Is it THIS year for Atalanta? (Craig M.)

To be honest Craig, that we’re even asking that question is an achievement in itself. It is remarkable that a team of Atalanta’s tradition and budget is being spoken about as a credible title contender.

Even with the pay hikes and bonuses accrued from playing Champions League football for a second year in a row, their wage bill (€42.6 million) is still in the bottom half of Serie A and pales in comparison with those at Roma (€112 million) and Napoli (€105 million) let alone Juventus (€236 million) and Inter (€149 million).

The Dea continues to punch way above her weight and has been able to sustain, recycle and improve year on year in a way, for instance, Udinese were unable to beyond three seasons at the beginning of the 2010s. As bullish as I am about the best-run club in the league, the odds are still stacked against them. Juventus underperformed last year and still won the league. And have you seen the subs Inter have been making recently? Alexis Sanchez, Radja Nainggolan, Arturo Vidal, Achraf Hakimi and Stefano Sensi. What’s encouraging is Atalanta were not broken up over the summer. They lost their back-up wing-back (Timothy Castagne) and sold a teenage winger who played 26 minutes for them for more than €40 million (Amad Traore).

Atalanta can beat anyone on their day. They will finish as the league’s top scorers again. I suspect they will win the Coppa Italia. Gian Piero Gasperini already used his depth better than any other manager in the league last season. The goals Atalanta scored from the bench was indicative of that and now they’re even deeper at every position.

In some respects there are fewer question marks hanging over the Bergamaschi than the other top sides. Atalanta have picked up right where they left off. In fact, they have been even better. Last season Atalanta lost to Cagliari at home. This season they destroyed them 5-2. Three-nil up against Lazio at the Olimpico last season, Atalanta drew 3-3. This season they kicked on and won 4-1 instead. Those results are an early gauge of the psychological progression Atalanta made over the course of those unforgettable Champions League nights against Europe’s elite. Serie A feels less difficult than it did before and I’d say we’re as close to a genuine outsider winning the league as we have been since Verona in 1985 and Sampdoria in 1991.

Advertisement

Any chance for a weekly COVID monitoring in Serie A? Also a full list/log of all players diagnosed chronologically? (Jasper J.)

Maybe not a list but we will update you on the situation. For instance, the Genoa case, in which 22 players and staff tested positive, exposed the shortcomings of the Serie A protocol which didn’t have a threshold to determine how many players a team needs to have available in order to fulfil a fixture. Since then it has been amended in line with UEFA’s guidelines (13) and there is also the proviso that should 10 players test positive in the space of a week, clubs can break the glass and activate an emergency option to postpone their next game. This isn’t a recourse teams can abuse though. To prevent regular disruption and ensure the season keeps moving forward it can be used only once per team in Serie A with exceptions also being made for the Super Cup and the latter stages of the Coppa Italia.

Considering the rules laid out by the league have been ratified by the government and its scientific committee, there is everything in place for the campaign to continue just as long as clubs abide by them. Local health authorities can intercede in the interests of their region as and when they see fit though and this hangs like the sword of Damocles over every fixture. While the threshold should allow teams to fulfil their fixtures, the knock-on effects to sporting balance and the integrity of the competition are obvious if, for instance, a team like Genoa can only play a half-strength side supplemented by players from their academy after a fortnight of hardly any training.

Ciao James. How will Pirlo fit Chiesa into his Juve team? (Giovanni P.)

I’d anticipate he plays in a hybrid role out wide. For me, Chiesa has been at his most decisive as a wing-back. Fiorentina coach Beppe Iachini realised as much after lockdown and managed to reignite what had been a pretty underwhelming season for the 22-year-old. Up until that point, I felt the barely-whispered-about Riccardo Orsolini was enjoying a better season in his position at Bologna, not to mention Domenico Berardi at Sassuolo. When Chiesa faced off with Orso in July, though, he managed to put a gloss on his season by scoring a hat-trick and combined for nine goals and assists in his final 10 games in purple, ending the campaign in double figures for the first time in his career.

As for where he’ll fit in Turin, well, everything we’ve seen from Pirlo so far, either in his thesis or on the pitch, tells us he wants the team to build up and attack in a 3-2-5. I’d expect to see Chiesa on the right or inverted on the left. He can play up front but I never found him particularly convincing in tighter spaces and closer to goal. Ultimately I’d say the No 10 position will be contested by Aaron Ramsey, Dejan Kulusevski and Paulo Dybala with the latter duo also vying with Alvaro Morata for a place as Cristiano Ronaldo’s foil. Chiesa will duke it out with Juan Cuadrado and Federico Bernardeschi on one side and Alex Sandro and Gianluca Frabotta on the other.

Do you think Sassuolo can challenge for top seven this year? (Brandon W.)

For Sassuolo to have as many players starting for Italy as Juve these days is a measure of Roberto De Zerbi’s work. Domenico Berardi and Francesco Caputo have both scored for the Nazionale over the last week and Manuel Locatelli was arguably man of the match against the Netherlands in the September international break. We shouldn’t forget where Sassuolo hail from. They had never played in Serie A until seven years ago and are still based in a tiny town famous for its ceramics in Emilia Romagna.

Advertisement

Three players representing Italy is huge and a ringing endorsement of De Zerbi’s ability to unlock potential and improve the players at his disposal. As an aside, I’m loving Filip Duricic this season who has been drifting in from the left while Jeremie Boga finishes his quarantine. Along with Atalanta and Milan, I’d say Sassuolo are the team that have impressed me most and they rival Gasperini’s troupe as the league’s best entertainers.

Breaking into the top seven for the second time in their history will however require one of the elite to have a bad season and beyond Roma I don’t see anyone faltering. More or less everyone in that echelon has actually strengthened. Milan, for instance, have their best side in years. As with Atalanta’s title challenge, Sassuolo, who kept all their best players over the autumn transfer window, are going to have to be significantly greater than the sum of their parts given their own wage bill is more bottom seven (€35 million) than top seven. For now though, De Zerbi has a featherweight hitting like a heavyweight and long may it continue.

Has Sinisa Mihajlovic taken this current Bologna side as far as he can? They have made some similar mistakes as last season in the opening three games. Also, do you think the club’s inability to recruit a striker will come back to haunt them this season? (Frank R.)

For Bologna’s technical director Walter Sabatini, just seeing Mihajlovic back in the dugout was liking winning a trophy after the Serb’s diagnosis with leukaemia a year ago. We shouldn’t lose sight of the extraordinary circumstances in which the team played even pre-COVID. Think of the times Mihajlovic couldn’t attend games while undergoing chemotherapy for fear of infection and how much trust he needed to place in his sideline stand-ins Emilio De Leo and Miroslav Tanjga.

The 51-year-old showed tremendous courage in refusing to allow his illness to get in the way of his work and a caring and compassionate club was awestruck by his commitment. Before lockdown results were notably better when Mihajlovic was prowling his technical area. The team found his presence to be a source of inspiration. Afterwards, I’d argue that Bologna’s high-intensity style and shallow depth was not conducive to playing every three days and their limitations came to the fore.

It’s hard to be gung-ho when you have holes in your defence and Bologna were without a left-back all season and used Takehiro Tomiyasu, a centre-back, on the right. Sabatini and the club’s sporting director Riccardo Bigon have addressed that in pre-season. Dijk’s recent suspension didn’t matter as much now Aaron Hickey is an option and the arrival of Lorenzo De Silvestri, a player Mihajlovic knows well from Torino, means Tomiyasu can play his natural position through the middle. If a team that hasn’t kept a clean sheet in almost an entire season can begin to tighten things up a little in defence then Bologna can finish in the top half of the table and maybe even push for the Europa League.

While it’s a shame Dynamo Kyiv’s qualification for the Champions League group stages ended Bologna’s chances of signing the highly-rated Ukrainian striker Vladyslav Supryaga, the impact of Musa Barrow — a January signing from Atalanta — shouldn’t go unnoticed. Only Roby Baggio, no less, has a better goal-per-minute ratio in red and blue…

Have Pippo Inzaghi’s first few weeks with Benevento in the top flight been different to his previous two disappointing top-flight stints? (Abu Sayed Mohammed S)

I’d say so. People tried to make Benevento’s last game against Bologna personal because they sacked Pippo 18 months ago. He stayed classy though and refused to let them. Pippo even praised Bologna for doing everything in their power to make it work, like going big in the January transfer window only for results to remain as bad as they were before and compel them to give him the boot.

For someone who has won everything there is to win in the game, Pippo is no big-time Charlie. He accepts he has a lot to learn and looks up to his brother, Simone. Let’s not forget the 47-year-old’s humility either. After AC Milan binned him off, Pippo thought nothing of starting again in the third division with Venezia and he went back down to Serie B when Bologna fired him.

Advertisement

A willingness to learn from his mistakes endears him to me and underlines how serious he is about being as much of a success in the technical area as he was in the penalty area. Benevento got a bit lucky against Bologna but to already have six points from nine when they had to wait until December for a win on their last visit to the top flight is all anyone cares about right now.

Do you think Sarri will be apportioned to the Fiorentina job or Roma job? Which is more likely or the best fit? (Alistair S.)

I’m as intrigued to see where Sarri lands next as you are, Alistair. Technically he’s still under contract at Juventus though and while the club would like to come to a resolution, I doubt Sarri is going to leave a full two years’ salary on the table, particularly after he earned a relative pittance for the first two decades of his career, which were spent in the lower leagues.

As for his next move, well, Roma expressed an interest while the 61-year-old was at Chelsea but the change of ownership, absence of a sporting director, and the fact they are showing patience with Paulo Fonseca who, in my opinion, deserves a chance to work in greater tranquility this season, discourages me from imagining Sarri in the dugout at the Olimpico, even though I think he’d make for an interesting party guest for Jep Gambardella in a sequel of the art drama film The Great Beauty.

The Fiorentina job, on the other hand, is one that piques my curiosity for the simple reason that I’m not entirely convinced Iachini is a bold enough coach to extract the maximum from the talented squad assembled by Rocco Commisso and Joe Barone. Losing at home to Samp killed a lot of the buzz generated by the performance against Inter at San Siro and two defeats from three games has made this a long international break in Florence. Sarri would be a romantic choice. His grandmother used to live a stone’s throw from the Franchi and he was a frequent attendee of Fiorentina games as a boy.

The issue, as with another esteemed Tuscan coach, Luciano Spalletti is two-fold — for now, there is no vacancy in the city of the Medicis and for a club already paying Franck Ribery €6 million a year, the cost of hiring either of them would be prohibitive. Reason again for the town hall to back Commisso’s plans for a new stadium so the club can make more money and be even more competitive.

When Ronaldo Vieira was sold by Leeds to Sampdoria he was considered, by some people, the better future prospect when compared to Kalvin Phillips. With Phillips recently gaining his first England caps and performing well in the Premier League, how has Vieira faired in Serie A? How is his move to Samp currently viewed in Italy, is his progression in danger of stalling or will his recent loan move to Verona give him an opportunity to get his career kick-started? (James T.)

I spoke to Ronaldo around a year ago and he was happy with his decision to move to Italy. You have to remember he spent part of his childhood in Portugal, speaks a few languages already and is very adaptable.

His first year in Genoa was a bit of a learning curve as you might expect for someone moving up a level and transitioning from one football culture to another. Marco Giampaolo very much wanted him to sit in front of the defence and Ronaldo’s positioning was quite rigid, which was different from what he experienced at Leeds where he was a box-to-box midfielder.

Advertisement

Last year he got to play his natural game more and he was in the team every week for the first six months under Claudio Ranieri. Things changed around January when Premier League clubs started sniffing around and Ronaldo inexplicably fell down the pecking order.

Verona should be a good club for him. They were a revelation last season and are in full rebuild mode after the team got broken up. I wonder if Ivan Juric sees Ronaldo playing the role Matteo Pessina performed so well as the midfield runner into the penalty area last term. The 22-year-old could do with adding more goals to his game even if right now the priority has to be regular playing time.

If Ciro Immobile doesn’t replicate his Serie A form for the national team… who can make the difference for Italy? They do not seem to have that guy up top, without Immobile, who has never looked too good internationally. (Paolo C.)

Well, maybe they don’t need a centre-forward at all, Paolo — I’m not sure I believe my own hot take here but hear me out. Italy first clicked under Roberto Mancini in one of those unpredictable striker-less systems. Chiesa, Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Bernardeschi played up front and interchanged neatly, but here’s the thing with Immobile: when you have a striker who beat Robert Lewandowski to the Golden Shoe you have to make the most of it. Mancini has tried to take some of the pressure off Immobile saying if he played 38 games in a row for his country, he’d probably end the year with 28 international goals.

Personally, I think a season in the Champions League is ideal preparation for Immobile going into next summer’s Euros. He’s only got to play in it twice and people forget he scored four times in six games for Dortmund in the group stages. More generally the lack of Champions League reps for Italian attackers is a problem and must have been a motivating factor behind Chiesa’s move. You look at Domenico Berardi, for instance, who is kicking on again under De Zerbi at Sassuolo but stalled for a couple of years and has only played one season of Europa League football. Naturally, I’m curious to see how much Moise Kean gets on at PSG too.

Besides Alessandro Bastoni, who will be the next great Italian defender? I’m struggling to find them, Mancini is average at Roma whilst Gabbia just started at Milan (Khairul I.)

I’m not sure I’d write Gianluca Mancini off as average. He also did a fine job for Roma in midfield at times last season. It was interesting to hear what his namesake Bobby Gol had to say before the Poland game this week. “Italy has always had the best defenders in the world and continues to do so,” argued Roberto Mancini, and for me, Khairul, Giorgio Chiellini still — when fit — deserves to be in the conversation as one of the top five in the world. It’s probably worth reiterating here that Manchester City enquired about Leonardo Bonucci again this summer. But, generally speaking, I take your point.

You want to know about the next generation and I suppose Daniele Rugani and Alessio Romagnoli haven’t quite lived up to expectation. Experience tells me not to rush to judgement. Look at Francesco Acerbi at Lazio, who has taken Romagnoli’s place in the national team and was the best Italian centre-back last season. As with a player at the other end of the pitch — Ciro Immobile — maybe he’d be attracting greater recognition if he were playing Champions League football every year.

I haven’t quite given up on Mattia Caldara, on loan at Atalanta from Milan, for that reason even though injuries keep disrupting his development. Inter’s Bastoni has distinguished himself as the best up-and-coming centre-back over the last two years at the moment but sources at the FIGC have flagged up Lorenzo Pirola to me. Monza have loaned him from Inter this season and playing every three days for a second-division side with huge expectation surrounding it as the latest Berlusconi-Galliani project should be good for his progression.

Advertisement

Any chance we could get an article on Monza and the madness going on there? (Jamie D.)

We’ve already been in touch so watch this space.

Should we expect to see four Italian sides in the Champions League last 16, not to mention one in the final? All have passable groups, while there are merits favouring a strong tournament push by the three Northern sides (luck of the draw notwithstanding). (Otlotleng M.)

The draw was favourable but history tells me to be cautious before predicting a full house of Italian teams reaching the knockout stages. There have been some close calls in the last couple of years like when Napoli and Inter departed on various tie-breakers two seasons ago but Serie A hasn’t sent a quartet through to the last 16 since 2002-03. Juventus and Inter should be fine but we’ll have to see about the others.

Atalanta have the toughest, most pyrotechnic and fun-as-hell group (Liverpool, Ajax and Midtjylland) but I think the schedule is kinder to them than it is to Lazio who play Dortmund straight away and then go on the road in back-to-back games. It’ll be a major stress test for Simone Inzaghi’s squad, which is deeper than it was immediately after lockdown when their title challenge collapsed. They have to get off on the right foot and can’t let 13 years away from this competition faze them too much.

As for Serie A’s chances of having a representative in the final, people love to hate Antonio Conte’s record in Europe but I think making last year’s Europa League final will have fortified the team mentally regardless of the defeat they suffered to Sevilla. Recall how his Juve team went all the way to Berlin — under Max Allegri — a year after reaching the semis of UEFA’s second-tier competition for instance. Obviously, the change of management style played an undeniable role in their journey to the final that season, but speak to the players and what they’ll tell you is they benefitted immensely from the experience of going deep in the lesser of the two continental tournaments 12 months earlier.

Inter’s squad should, in theory, enable them to be competitive across all three fronts.

(Top photo: Matteo Ciambelli/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kWpqbW1pbnxzfJFpZmpoX2aBcL%2FEq6CeZZFit7bCxKerrqtdlsGiuMCnq5plnpa9sLjIZpqhoZWornA%3D