Winners and Losers for Serie A So Far Entering International Break
As Italian club football takes a pause for Antonio Conte's Azzurri, it's a good time to assess the biggest winners and losers from the season so far.
Juventus and Roma are a cut above the rest, but looking away from the title race there have been some personal victories—and a few set-backs, too—that have played a big part in making this Serie A campaign a compelling one.
Winner: Massimiliano Allegri
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Arguably Serie A's biggest winner so far, Massimiliano Allegri is enjoying life at Juventus. The former AC Milan boss divided opinion while at the San Siro, but since taking over in Turin he's proven himself to be competent and comfortable at a top club.
Back in Milan, the Rossoneri's continued struggles now make it clear—as if it hadn't been already—that the manager wasn't the problem. Clarence Seedorf has already been sacked, and Pippo Inzaghi continues to struggle.By contrast, Allegri—much derided by his former employers—is now sitting pretty at the top of the league.
Years of mismanagement at board level has brought one of Europe's great clubs to its knees, and Silvio Berlusconi can't keep blaming coaches because the more things change on the bench, the more it stays the same on the pitch.
Allegri has so far proven, as he did in his first year with Milan, that given a competitive squad, a stable environment and the freedom needed to do his job, he's capable of succeeding at the highest level. He's struggled somewhat in Europe—much like his predecessor, Antonio Conte—but the early signs are still very positive for the 47-year-old.
Loser: Roberto Donadoni
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Roberto Donadoni's stock has fallen sharply this season as Parma currently sit rock bottom in the table with nine losses and just two wins so far.
The Crociati finished a very creditable 6th last term, missing out on European football only because of a contentious decision by the Italian football federation not to grant them a UEFA licence due to some financial irregularities.
What happened over the summer is still anyone's guess. Donadoni's side has gone from a competitive unit which played attractive football to a sorry, out-of-sorts team that's forgotten how to win in the space of a few months and if he doesn't fix it soon, he'll be out of a job.
If he'd become available just a few short months ago, there would likely have been job offers flooding in for the ex-winger. On current form, however, he might struggle to find someone willing to give him another chance.
Winner: Jose Callejon
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Napoli's Jose Callejon is having a wonderful season. The Spaniard has eight goals in 10 starts for the Partenopei, earning him a call from Vicente del Bosque and his national team.
The 27-year-old's rich form has been invaluable to Napoli and Rafa Benitez, as they haven't got off to the best of starts. Gonzalo Higuain was stuttering in the box until recently and it was Callejon, with 40 per cent of the squad's total goals so far, who was sparing his teammates' blushes.
Losers: Torino
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Losing Ciro Immobile and Alessio Cerci would hurt most teams, but it seems to have utterly crippled Torino.
The Italian duo contributed 36 goals last season, providing a cutting edge to Giampiero Ventura's well-drilled side that allowed them to punch above their weight.
Despite the big-money departures, however, there hasn't been much quality added to Toro, and they're now suffering. Fabio Quagliarella is the top scorer with four, but worryingly, the whole squad combined has managed just seven strikes.
Winner: Keisuke Honda
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Japanese star Keisuke Honda had a poor start to life in Serie A last season, but has been making amends at Milan this campaign.
The 28-year-old playmaker has finally re-found the form that made him such a hot property at CSKA Moscow, linking well with his teammates, particularly Jeremy Menez.
Losers: Fiorentina
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After being robbed of Mario Gomez and Giuseppe Rossi for much of last season, Fiorentina fans were reasonably excited about seeing the pair in action, unhampered by injury, this term.
Cruelly, however, the Viola have lost both strikers to the treatment table again and are suffering badly.
Vincenzo Montella's side could be expected to challenge for Champions League qualification with the Italy and Germany internationals fit and on scoring form, but without the pair they're finding it hard to win games and currently lay in lowly 11th.
Winner: Mauro Icardi
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When Mauro Icardi isn't getting caught up in silly Twitter spats with his former friend, Sampdoria's Maxi Lopez, over Wanda Nara, Icardi's girlfriend and Lopez's ex-wife, the young Argentine is a brilliant footballer.
There aren't many positives to discuss in Inter's season so far, but holding on to Icardi in the summer must surely be one of them.
The 21-year-old was linked heavily with a move to the Premier League in the transfer window—as per the Telegraph—but chose to stay at the San Siro instead.
The Nerazzurri are languishing in ninth now, 12 points off the top after just 11 games, but without Icardi's seven goals—41 per cent of the team's total—things would be a lot worse.
Losers: Eugenio Corini and Chievo Verona
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After five loses, a draw and just one win, the decision to sack Eugenio Corini from the Chievo bench might not seem all that unreasonable.
Look a little closer, however, and it becomes harder to understand.
The Flying Donkeys are a small club with limited resources. Corini's opening run of fixtures included ties with Juventus, Napoli, Milan, Sampdoria and Roma—the game that eventually cost him his job. Did Luca Campedelli or his board actually expect Chievo to beat the top sides in the league?
The fact that they managed a win over Napoli—in Naples, no less—should have earned Corini praise because it was certainly three points they won't have been expecting.
Instead, he was fired for losing 3-0 to the Giallorossi at the Stadio Olimpico, a result that should have shocked absolutely no one given the gap in quality between the two squads.
Since then, Rolando Maran has taken over and continued the losing streak. This time, however, it's been to smaller sides like Palermo, Sassuolo and Genoa.
Had Corini still been in charge, the team would be more stable and perhaps would have won those games. Even six points from those fixtures would have lifted them out of the relegation zone and into the top half of the table, just behind Inter.
Instead, the desperately predictable knee-jerk reaction of a club president to a string of difficult games resulted in a decent manager loosing his job and a team losing any chance it had of finding stability and turning things around quickly.
Winners: Sampdoria
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Sinisa Mihajlovic's Sampdoria have been one of the surprises of the season. The blistering form with which they started the campaign has cooled somewhat in recent weeks, but the Genoan side are still sitting pretty in fourth.
The Blucerchiati are above the likes of Milan, Inter, Udinese and Fiorentina and can now genuinely believe that they have a chance of Champions League—or Europa League, at least—qualification in 2015.
Is there someone you'd like to see on this list? Let me know on Twitter, @ColliOBrien.
