10 Biggest Flops of the 2014/15 Serie A Season
The Serie A season is coming to a close. Many teams and players came into the campaign looking to make names for themselves and achieve some level of success.
Not all achieved their goals.
It is the nature of sport for there to be winners and losers, those who succeed and those who fail. There were plenty of successes in Italy this season, but there were a few failures as well.
Who has the most egg on their face as the season comes to an end? Let's look at 10 of the biggest flops of Serie A this year.
10. Fernando Llorente
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What a difference a year makes.
A year ago Fernando Llorente joined with Carlos Tevez to form the best strike partnership Turin had seen since Alessandro Del Piero and David Trezeguet were in their primes. He started slowly but eventually scored 16 in the league and two more in the Champions League.
Those numbers have dipped dramatically. This year he's only scored eight times in 38 games, 31 of them being starts.
The difference has stemmed from Juve's summer coaching change. Last year, in Antonio Conte's more regimented, rehearsed scheme, Tevez was kept closer to Llorente, pulling defenders away from him and giving the Argentine more opportunity to directly feed his partner.
This season under Massimiliano Allegri, Tevez has been given more freedom to roam, allowing markers to keep better tabs on the Spaniard and making direct assists less likely.
As the season has worn on, it's become clear that the more mobile Alvaro Morata is the better partner for Tevez in Allegri's more free-flowing style. The tactics simply don't suit him anymore. If he played as a pure target man with high-quality wingers, he could score 25 goals.
Right now, he's carved a niche as a late-game sub who can be used as a target for defenders looking to clear and then hold the ball up for one or two men to get upfield to help bleed time. But that's not the kind of role a player of his stature is going to settle for going forward.
Llorente has been a major cog in the team's return to the top levels of the game, but Juve are likely to sell him this summer.
9. Mattia De Sciglio
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At the end of last year, Mattia De Sciglio was being talked of as the next in the long line of top-quality AC Milan defenders that has included Franco Baresi, Paolo Maldini, Alessandro Costacurta and Alessandro Nesta. He made the World Cup roster and started Italy's do-or-die group finale against Uruguay.
This year he's being talked of as a bust.
Injury held him to only 15 starts this season, but it was his time on the field that saw his stock fall so dramatically.
According to WhoScored.com his counting stats were down almost across the board from last season. He wasn't as sure in the tackle, and he wasn't reading passes the way he had.
The biggest difference was discipline. De Sciglio has been sent off twice this year, including in his most recent outing, a 3-0 loss against Napoli on May 3. His transgression was even more egregious considering the fact that it occurred less than 50 seconds into the game, forcing his teammates to play a man down for 89 minutes.
De Sciglio is young and can get back on track, but this season was supposed to be a major step forward in his growth. His failure could have ripple effects. The pressure of comparisons to a legend like Maldini can be crushing, and unless he picks up his game soon, he's going to get squished.
8. Juan Manuel Iturbe
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This summer, Juan Manuel Iturbe was used as exhibit A that Juventus' grip on the league was loosening. The 21-year-old Argentine winger was a top transfer target of the Bianconeri, but after Antonio Conte's abrupt resignation as manager, Roma swept in and snagged the player from under Juventus CEO Giuseppe Marotta's nose.
It was considered a major coup for the Giallorossi. Juve were in chaos after Conte's departure, something Roma president James Pallotta took full advantage of to bring Iturbe in. It was thought that with a high-quality supporting cast he could improve on the eight goals he scored with Verona and blossom into a top-level forward.
It never happened.
Iturbe was limited to 17 starts due to injury and inconsistent play. He's only scored twice this year with only one assist, adding one goal and two assists in the Champions League. It's a paltry return for a €22 million investment.
Speaking of Roma and the transfer market...
7. James Pallotta
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Iturbe isn't the only man Pallotta has swung and missed at this year, and it's hurt his club.
While the tandem of Davide Astori and Kostas Manolas has more or less made up for the loss of Mehdi Benatia, his other moves have been spotty at best. Ashley Cole gave little to no contribution this year. Urby Emanuelson had no impact whatsoever and got loaned to Atalanta in the summer.
Even worse was the way he tinkered with his forward line this winter. After loaning Mattia Destro to Milan, he grabbed Victor Ibarbo from Cagliari on loan and bought CSKA Moscow hit man Seydou Doumbia for €14.4 million.
Neither move has borne fruit. It was discovered on his arrival that Ibarbo was suffering an injury, and he ended up missing five weeks. Since his return, he hasn't scored and has supplied a lone assist. Doumbia has only found the field 12 times and has only returned two goals.
Pallotta also fell afoul of Roma's fans when he strongly criticized the fans who unfurled banners berating the mother of Ciro Esposito, a Napoli fan killed by a Roma ultra at last year's Coppa Italia final, at the game between the two teams at the Stadio Olimpico in April. Pallotta's words prompted a call from ultras for all fans to boycott Roma's game against Atalanta.
Now, the actions of the fans at the Napoli game were heinous and Pallotta's criticism, while profane, was eminently justified. But the row with his own fans was icing on the cake to a year that, in part because of his own actions in the transfer window, saw the team regress rather than build on last year's stellar season.
6. Lukas Podolski
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This was a tough decision between the German and Xherdan Shaqiri. The Swiss came in with big expectations—on a big transfer fee—this winter, but he's bettered Lukas Podolski, if by the barest of margins.
In 16 games (eight starts) since coming to Inter on loan from Arsenal, Podolski has only scored once and added only one assist.
It took the German international nearly four full months to even make those contributions, notching his assist against Roma on April 25 and his goal three days later against Udinese.
For a man looking for consistent playing time, it was a dismal campaign. He'll head back to Arsenal and likely look for a new place to get minutes.
5. Fernando Torres
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What a monumental mistake this turned out to be.
Interestingly, it didn't start out that way. In his first start for Milan in late September, Fernando Torres, who had been plucked on loan from Chelsea, scored a goal in a 2-2 draw against Empoli and was arguably the man of the match.
After that, nothing.
Torres never scored again, and by the time the winter transfer window rolled around, Milan were sick of him. They assumed full control of the player from Chelsea and used him to acquire Alessio Cerci from Atletico Madrid in a swap of 18-month loans.
Torres' fall from grace has been precipitous, and his time with Milan sealed it. This may have been the worst move of the summer in the entire league.
4. Filippo Inzaghi
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When AC Milan legend Filippo Inzaghi was promoted from the Primavera team to take the place of his former teammate Clarence Seedorf, the team's fans were flush with optimism. That optimism was ratcheted up a notch when the team scored eight times in their first two games.
At the winter break, Milan were considered to be in solid position to at least get into the Europa League and even to have an outside shot at the Champions League.
Then the walls came tumbling down.
To be fair, the warning signs had been there all through the first half of the season. Milan led the league in points surrendered from winning positions, and they had to come back against the likes of Empoli and Cesena.
Since the calendars have been replaced, Milan have spiraled. They've lost nine games since January and for a large portion of the second half looked totally lacking in motivation.
Inzaghi has taken the blame for this debacle of a season. Fans have pointed out his strange team selection and downright puzzling in-game substitutions. In particular, they asked why players like Michael Essien, Sulley Muntari and Daniele Bonera consistently got playing time over promising youngsters.
Inzaghi is not the only reason Milan have struggled. He was handed a mediocre squad, and the will-he-or-won't-he saga over Silvio Berlusconi potentially selling the team has provided constant distraction for the last two months.
But Inzaghi must shoulder some blame. He was put in a difficult position and didn't rise to the occasion. It's one thing to make one's first mistakes as a senior team coach in Serie B or the Lega Pro. It's entirely another to make them at AC Milan. He certainly made them and, perhaps unforgivably, didn't learn from them.
Hopefully Super Pippo will gain a job lower down the ladder and improve. But this year is certainly a huge failure.
3. Zdenek Zeman
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Another Serie A club took a foray into Zemanlandia this season. Predictably, things didn't go well.
Zdenek Zeman has been coaching in Italy since the mid 1970s, and he's had some impressive successes in the lower divisions. He's won Serie B twice and has even finished second and third with Lazio during his two-and-a-half seasons there. He's also been credited with kick-starting the career of Alessandro Nesta during his time at the Biancocelesti.
But since the mid-'90s, his stock has dropped. He hasn't had success since, and his all-out offensive style has left his teams vulnerable in the back. He's since had some good results in lower leagues, but his last trip to the top flight with Roma took only half a year to turn sour.
Given another chance at redemption at Cagliari, Zeman was an abject failure. The Isolani were 2-6-8 (W/D/L) when he was fired after a 3-1 home loss to Juventus before the winter break.
After Gianfranco Zola failed to get the team out of the drop zone, Zeman was brought back in, more for financial reasons than tactical ones. In five games, Cagliari dug itself deeper into the hole, failing to win and losing four of five before the ax hit again.
If this was the 68-year-old's last chance to get a crack at Serie A, he certainly didn't take it.
2. Roma
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Last year Roma had the best team in their history. They only lost five times and garnered a record 85 points.
In four of the last eight years since the Calciopoli scandal, Roma would've won the league, and tied for it in a fifth. Unfortunately for them, Antonio Conte guided Juventus to the best domestic season in European history, dropping points only five times all season and racking up 102 points.
When Conte left Juve in the summer, the three-time champions looked vulnerable. The capital club was expected to mount a serious challenge for their first Scudetto in two decades.
Instead, they fell on their faces.
They won their first six games in the league before their controversial 3-2 loss at the Juventus Stadium. The loss clearly affected the team mentally—which has been their main weakness for the last half a decade.
A little less than three weeks after their loss to Juve they welcomed Bayern Munich to the Stadio Olimpico for a Champions League group-stage game. The Germans took their time. It was 5-0 by halftime. By the final whistle the team had been annihilated 7-1.
Eventually, the team crashed out of the Champions League with a 2-0 loss to Manchester City. In the meantime, Juve showed them multiple opportunities to draw level with them at the top of the league but they never took the opportunity to up the pressure.
Then the bottom fell out. It took 11 games for Roma to lose in the league once the winter break ended, but of the first 10 they drew eight. They threw away several winning positions and allowed Juve to race ahead of them, building an insurmountable lead that was consolidated with the seventh of those eight draws at the Olimpico.
Letting Juve get away wasn't the only issue they had to deal with. That stretch of draw-itis also allowed Lazio and Napoli to get back into the race for second. Lazio even took the spot for four weeks before Roma grabbed it back and finally confirmed it with a Derby della Capitale win.
A second straight trip to the Champions League is ordinarily looked on as a success, but given the expectations, Roma were a dismal failure this year. In the best-case scenario, they will finish the season with 12 fewer points than last year.
If Roma are going to take the next step, they're going to have to make serious changes this year.
1. Parma
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This is not an indictment on Parma's players or of coach Roberto Donadoni. They did the absolute best they could under extraordinary circumstances.
The flops here are the men who put Parma into administration.
The first of these men was former president Tommaso Ghirardi. It was under his stewardship that Parma started racking up debt. When the club was denied a UEFA license for unpaid taxes last year, he sold the team to Rezart Taci, an Albanian businessman who sold it two months later to Giampietro Manenti.
The game of musical owners did the team's performance no favors. Manenti repeatedly insisted that the money to pay Parma's late wages and other debts was forthcoming, but it never arrived. After two months, Manenti was arrested for money laundering, throwing the team even further into chaos.
Eventually, the team was placed under administration. There it remains, still searching for a buyer and uncertain as to whether it will even exist come next season. If it is the end, it's a sad one for a proud club with a storied history.
