Italian Serie A 2024/2025

[bubba zanetti]

Well at least I say what it's logical in relation to what Napoli offers in the pitch. You keep spamming the same points in every week, but will you stay to your word if they don't win the title in the end?

Yes. And I would not give a fuck if that means we won.

 

[Suraj]

Just because they aren't world class players that doesn't mean they aren't good enough to win a scudetto. Especially Politano, who is kinda underrated on this forum

politano is not too bad tbh just very frustrating player. still a team with those two starting week in week out, either the coach is really good or rest of the team is really good

Roma plays decisive game vs Eintracht on Thursday. They'll barely walk vs Napoli.

And this is the main problem, every team that can take points away from Napoli plays 3 days before they play them. Now Juventus, Atalanta before, and Roma next. I guess next time we can hope they drop points is Lazio away. They have a week rest against them.

yeah 0 chance roma does anything, lazio is the one that could potentially take points off them

 

[Jane The Virgin]

Idk, I was hoping Napoli would drop points. Was super stoked when I saw the result & Juve leading, I don't think that's ever happened in my entire life, to be genuinely happy for them leading.

But yeah, I think Napoli is that team this season.


Conte is Conte. He turns boys to men. I can never hate him after he won it for us and single handedly made Basto and Bare world class players. They'd never be 50% of what they are now without Conte in their professional life.

It will take some luck and other shit for us to win the title this season. I don't see it happening. But not in a tragic way tbh, it's not that we are playing super bad or anything... It's just Napoli, they as a team are operating in another level this season so far.

 

[Jnr]

We can't even have +3pts cushion before the Milano derby and I wanted 7 before Napoli destroyed Fiore, Atalanta, Juve.

What we right now have is pressure to win all of those games :

@Lecce
Monaco
@Milan
Fiore
@Juve
Genoa

Then Lazio in Coppa and week's rest before @Napoli the showdown( hold on!!!, Lega will put Fiorentina postponed game in this space, there you go!)

We could theoretically do it , but we need the full squad in peak fitness so Inzaghi can rotate here and there.

Chances are slim , look how gassed we were vs Bologna.

 

[Kramerica Industries]

that's nothing yet, before we meet on march 2 - napoli play 4 games, inter plays 8 games

Looking at our schedule, that's not actually entirely accurate. As of right now, our schedules leading up to the Napoli game are:

Inter
MD 22 (26-Jan)	@ Lecce	MD 22 (25-Jan)	Juventus
Champions League MD8 (29-Jan)	Monaco	n/a
MD 23 (2-Feb)	@ Milan	MD 23 (2-Feb)	@ Roma
MD 24 (TBA)	Fiorentina	MD 24 (TBA)	Udinese
MD 25 (TBA)	@ Juventus	MD 25 (TBA)	@ Lazio
MD 26 (TBA)	Genoa	MD 26 (TBA)	@ Como
Coppa Italia 1/4	Lazio	n/a
MD 27 (TBA)	@ Napoli	MD 27 (TBA)	Inter

Including this weekend, that's eight games for us vs. six for Napoli. It could become nine if the Fiorentina suspended game is rescheduled into this equation (it's still not been confirmed, from what I can tell). In theory it could be 10 if we somehow spin out of the top-8 automatic qualification in the Champions League, but this is exceedingly unlikely. We catch a "break" in that the R16 doesn't begin until the midweek directly after our trip to Naples; we'd be almost exponentially fucked if we played the away leg of the R16, then had to play away to Napoli in what might be our last chance to gain control in the Scudetto race, then have to play the return leg of the R16 immediately after that. Thankfully we avoided that scenario, I guess.

More broadly speaking, though, is that we haven't had a free midweek since Christmas. We got the week of Christmas off. Before that, our last free midweek was...holy shit, literally back in September. We've had a midweek game - league, CL, Coppa, or Supercoppa - every week except Christmas since the beginning of October. Christ.

 

[varmin]

If you can win scudetto with Juan Jesus and this Lukaku, then my friend, you would win scudetto with our roster in March.

What is your point? Napoli have only one game per week, and Conte has proven that can squeeze the maximum from his players.

 

[bubba zanetti]

What is your point? Napoli have only one game per week, and Conte has proven that can squeeze the maximum from his players.

We would never win anything having Juan Jesus as starter. We wouldn't fight for scudetto. Guy is a bum. Say what you want but Cunte does amazing job.

 

[ElDuccio]

I have no problem with Napoli winning the league if we win the CL. People will think im crazy, but i say there is a good chance that it will happen. Inzaghi is known to be "the master of cup games/knockout tournaments". I say if we are in a bad position in march we better focus on it and we probably will at that point, if things are not going well and the gap between Napoli and Inter is too big.

 

[ElDuccio]

We would never win anything having Juan Jesus as starter. We wouldn't fight for scudetto. Guy is a bum. Say what you want but Cunte does amazing job.

And he already did that with Juve, with Matri, Vucinic and all that serie b players. We were also almost winning the league with Gagliardini and Ashley young in his first year at Inter (we still made 85 points or something like that)

 

[Kramerica Industries]

Just to provide some counter-balance to something some of us (including myself) have said, it's also worth remembering a couple things:

• In 2017-'18, we caught quite a few breaks on our way to finally getting back to the Champions League for the first time in six years. The first thing was Italy being guaranteed four CL spots no matter what (and no qualifying rounds to get through either, direct to the group stage), no more having to hope for a strong coefficient from other teams helping us out. Mancini - dogshit football and all - had a 4th place finish two years previous, but under the rules at the time it wasn't enough for us. But, moreso to the point, we finished 4th that season, tied on points with Lazio, during a year in which our schedule was 38 + 2 games, while Lazio played 38 + 12 (Europa League) + 4 (Coppa) games. We played 40, they played 54, 14 more games. And it still took us having to make a late miracle comeback on the last match day in a fortunately-scheduled head-to-head in the last game to edge them out on a tiebreaker. Our exit from the banter era was facilitated by a 14 game-lighter schedule than our most important rival that season.
• In 2020-'21, the year we finally broke our Scudetto drought, we exited the Champions League in the group stage, and not just the CL but Europe altogether thanks to our 4th place finish. Lukaku blocking Alexis' goal and everything was the difference from 2nd place and 4th place. We played four Coppa Italia games during the 2nd half of the season, but that was it as far as distractions were concerned. (And I think the last of those Coppa games was in February.) Our biggest rivals that season were Juventus and Atalanta, both played five Coppa games (they met in the final) and they both played in the CL knockout stage. While it wasn't as large a margin as Inter/Lazio in 2017-'18 or Inter/Napoli this year is, they had heavier schedules than we did, we never had to leave Italy after the month of December began. When did we go on the 11-game win streak, and 15-2-0 run that clinched the Scudetto in a runaway manner for us? Beginning with our last game in January. During that 17-game run, we only had two non-league games to play, both early in that run. It was almost entirely just one-game-a-week the entire rest of the way. (As many of us will also remember, Milan ended up turning these tables on us the following season when they crashed out of Europe after the group stage and had a lighter 2nd half schedule while we had two games against Liverpool and also a maximum-length Coppa run, albeit they also played four Coppa games.)

Goes around and comes around. We've benefitted from this before, we've been burned by this before. Would it suck to miss out on the Scudetto in a season where Juventus and Milan were obvious non-contenders? Of course. And I'm already deeply pessimistic for next season thanks to us being robbed of a summer off this year due to the Club World Cup, so I really have no Scudetto expectations next year because I expect our core players to be fucking dead on their legs next year. (I hope the FIFA money is worth it; please spend some of it Oaktree.) So if I sound desperate for the Scudetto this year, it's because I am.

Having said that, as I've already written earlier, sometimes another team is just on a heater themselves and making life difficult. Napoli are having an exceptional season and they're legitimately looking better now than they were earlier on. That can be the dangerous thing. Sometimes shithousing 1-0 wins is a sign that you're eventually going to come down to earth. Other times, it's something you're able to do when you're still trying to improve upon things, and if things start to click then those wins turn into something other than 1-0's. Juventus was the former last year, Napoli's starting to look like the latter this season. Unfortunate for us that we aren't getting a repeat of 2023-'24 Juventus (at least yet). As I said earlier, when a team is on a 91+ point pace, there's only so much you can do. Our thing here is the "86 point fuck up budget", right? We're currently better than an 86-point pace (we're at 89.3 right now) and yet that might not be enough. What else can you do?

If we have a season where we finish in the upper-80s in points and make a deep Champions League run, and come away with nothing to show for it, then sometimes you just end up being forced to admit it wasn't your season, that luck wasn't in your favor, and just accept it for what it is. We wouldn't be the first team to miss out on a league title by a few points because we played several more games than the team that beat us did. The history books won't reflect that, only our memories will recall that information.

--

Not giving up though. No point in doing so.

 

[Suraj]

Looking at our schedule, that's not actually entirely accurate. As of right now, our schedules leading up to the Napoli game are:

Inter
MD 22 (26-Jan)	@ Lecce	MD 22 (25-Jan)	Juventus
Champions League MD8 (29-Jan)	Monaco	n/a
MD 23 (2-Feb)	@ Milan	MD 23 (2-Feb)	@ Roma
MD 24 (TBA)	Fiorentina	MD 24 (TBA)	Udinese
MD 25 (TBA)	@ Juventus	MD 25 (TBA)	@ Lazio
MD 26 (TBA)	Genoa	MD 26 (TBA)	@ Como
Coppa Italia 1/4	Lazio	n/a
MD 27 (TBA)	@ Napoli	MD 27 (TBA)	Inter

Including this weekend, that's eight games for us vs. six for Napoli. It could become nine if the Fiorentina suspended game is rescheduled into this equation (it's still not been confirmed, from what I can tell). In theory it could be 10 if we somehow spin out of the top-8 automatic qualification in the Champions League, but this is exceedingly unlikely. We catch a "break" in that the R16 doesn't begin until the midweek directly after our trip to Naples; we'd be almost exponentially fucked if we played the away leg of the R16, then had to play away to Napoli in what might be our last chance to gain control in the Scudetto race, then have to play the return leg of the R16 immediately after that. Thankfully we avoided that scenario, I guess.

More broadly speaking, though, is that we haven't had a free midweek since Christmas. We got the week of Christmas off. Before that, our last free midweek was...holy shit, literally back in September. We've had a midweek game - league, CL, Coppa, or Supercoppa - every week except Christmas since the beginning of October. Christ.

yeah i counting the rescheduled fiorentina match as well. i think they're just waiting for the monaco game to finish to confirm the free spots for us and it will be added to the schedule. i'd say if we manage to fuck up the monaco game, we'll definitely lose the scudetto. this team has played way too many games and will play lot more and that's the reason i'm not too harsh on the performance, i prefer getting results at the end of the day

 

[Suraj]

I have no problem with Napoli winning the league if we win the CL. People will think im crazy, but i say there is a good chance that it will happen. Inzaghi is known to be "the master of cup games/knockout tournaments". I say if we are in a bad position in march we better focus on it and we probably will at that point, if things are not going well and the gap between Napoli and Inter is too big.

yeah feel good about our chances in the CL as long as we avoid madrid. no way we stop their attack over 180 mins so i'm confident against any other side except them, hopefuly barca or liverpool knock them out

 

[Hikonyán]

Please stop with this 'if we win the CL', its absurd to even think about at this stage. We are huge underdogs for that title and would likely require some very favourable draws and circumstances. If we somehow make the semi's then we can start dreaming about it.

As far as serie a goes, if we dont win the league this season it will mostly come down to Napoli and Contes credit, rather than Inters players and coach discredit. Inters form and projection would be good enough to the win the league on most years, this year so far Napoli are simply performing well beyond expectations.

Inter is slightly worse than they were at this stage last season, but with 0 improvements to the squad being made over the sommer and players aging this is hardly unexpected. Last year was extraordinary in the league, both with Lautaro going nuts in the first half of the season, but also with avoiding injuries, while we havent been that lucky this season. Considering this, it seems abit out of touch with reality for people here to expect the team to perform better or atleast as well as last season.

This season is probably more representative or a 'normal' season for a team of Inters quality, while last was an overperforming season. People should remember that and not think that last season was a normal one and this season is an underperforming one, because that is not the case.

 

[varmin]

We would never win anything having Juan Jesus as starter. We wouldn't fight for scudetto. Guy is a bum. Say what you want but Cunte does amazing job.

I've never said otherwise, but he is doing fine job with one game per week in one competition.
And he left us, because he didn't want to work with our squad of leftovers anymore without his beloved Lukaka and Hakimi.
Let's us have some respect to our current coach and the job he is doing instead to praising everyone else in first opportunity.

 

[Puma]

There is no way this team is going to win the Champions League. They are not good enough.

Regarding Serie A, I hopefully and naively scan the fixtures from week to week looking for a match up where Napoli could potentilally drop points. Recently, it was Atalanta, this weekend, it was Juventus. But Napoli keep winning games.

Even with a game in hand and a direct match up against them in Naples, Inter are scared and desperate: scared to drop further points and desperate for other teams to do our bidding. To date, this season has been about missed opportunities and not playing to our potential: waiting for Lautaro to get started, leading games but not knowing how to finish, and dropped points.

Sometimes, the best squads do not always win. Inter may have the best squad in Serie A but we do not have the best team. And our biggest mistake this season is that from the beginning, we thought we had time to find our feet and there would be opportunities to make up points. But we all know from experience that with Conte at the helm of Napoli, those opportunities will be few and far between.

Here is to another week of hoping Napoli might slip up and that Inter will be able to keep pace.

 

[brehme1989]

We just need to beat Milan in the derby and then the rest will flow as they should. That's our mojo and we sort of lost it.

 

[satubito]

Love seeing Rube suffer like this. A draw would have been ideal.

 

[Fapuccino]

We're fighting on 2 fronts. It is what it is.

 

[Glass box]

We're fighting on 2 fronts. It is what it is.

Three. Coppa will squeeze some energy from the team too.

 

[Capo]

Still four months to the season, anything could happen.

One slight disagreement, one player partying to late or whatever the fuck could mean Napoli have a three game losing streak. The season is not done yet...

It's still too early for such calculcations. Give it a few more weeks and then you'll see how mid-table teams have nothing to play for. Not just reduce amount of games, but the competition gets tighter in every zone, whether it's for upper or lower spots.

In theory mid table teams get a easy run in the 2nd half with nothing to play for, but I am a fan of reducing the teams to 16. Improves the quality, players get a break and imagine the flow on effects of 1/3rd of the comp in CL with five teams.

I remember when it was 16 teams, Serie A was the best league in the world. We just cant get out of our own way...and continue with blatant mismanagement of the league and the game.