Juventus are the unanimous pick from the FC crew to win Serie A, but not everyone is convinced Cristiano Ronaldo will be player of the year.
On Sunday, Roma begin their new Serie A season following one of the most dramatic summers the league can remember. At one end of the table, the arrival of superstar Cristiano Ronaldo has brought all eyes on Italy, while at the other Chievo's shameful balance sheet chicanery and the match-fixing scandal that engulfed Parma striker Emanuele Calaio has further stained Italian football's already spotty reputation.
Amid all that, Roma remain unchanged: selling big players for large sums and using that money to try to uncover undervalued gems. The danger is that while they dig for treasure, the rivals that splashed on certified diamonds could leave them behind.
While last season's major top four rivals have stagnated or weakened, the two Milanese clubs have had sensational summers. AC Milan have managed to bag two of the summer's best signings in Gonzalo Higuain and Mattia Caldara despite their ownership turmoil and financial difficulties, while Inter have had a stunning window, nabbing adopted Roman Radja Nainggolan for an excellent price -- around €38 million -- and bolstering key positions with excellent players. Stefan De Vrij for free is the sort of operation Roma never seem able to pull off.
We won't even bother with Juventus, the whole world knows the deal. The centre of Italian football seems to have once again shifted north.
Lazio, who really should have qualified for the Champions League last season, have managed to hold on to their prized asset in Sergei Milinkovic-Savic, and while losing Felipe Anderson is a blow, the Brazilian missed huge chunks of last season and they still ended the campaign top scorers with 89 goals. Should they keep striker Ciro Immobile fit and firing, they will be top-four contenders.
It would be astonishing if Napoli get anywhere near the heights that Maurizio Sarri took them to over the past couple of seasons, especially after losing Jorginho. Their first XI was so finely balanced and their style of play so precise that the loss of their starting left-back nicked a hole in The Force. The metronomic midfielder leaves a gap that not even Carlo Ancelotti's wandering eyebrow will be able to fill.
Roma's prolific business has given them a bigger squad to cope with the raft of games that will come their way once the Champions League starts up again, but would anyone look at their starting XI and give them a chance of beating Ronaldo and the gang over the course of the season? The answer is no. If anything, Inter look the better bet for second, and had they managed to draw Luka Modric away from Madrid, we would have been looking at a Scudetto challenge there.
The loss of Alisson to Liverpool and Nainggolan to Inter are the exact sort of sales that demoralise a fanbase, especially when you see direct rivals splashing out on big names and making strides forward. Having to listen to the club president joke they will be sold as a way of saying they would stay at Roma, only for the club to then offload them (for a combined total of €113m, admittedly) sticks in the craw.
That's not to say that Roma's transfer window has been a disaster. Some of the the signings are intriguing, with Justin Kluivert in particular looking like one of the dark horse transfers of the summer. Bryan Cristante, Javier Pastore and World Cup winner Steven Nzonzi are three quality midfielders who will take the weight off Daniele De Rossi (age 35) and Kevin Strootman.
However, the feeling is that Roma have stood still rather than pushed on from their incredible Champions League run last season, which united a fractious fanbase and covered up for a mediocre league campaign that saw them finish 18 points behind all-conquering Juventus and 14 back from second-placed Napoli. From being Juve's closest challengers, Roma dropped further back into the pack of Serie A also-rans last season.
Buying small and selling high is a tactic that has largely worked for Roma's American ownership. It has helped stabilise the club after years of financial mismanagement, while the loss of key players each summer hasn't stopped consistently high league placings.
It would just have been nice to see them go for some of the same headline-grabbing purchases that have Inter, Milan and Juventus fans dreaming of bigger, better things.
Source: espn.co.uk