Antonio Conte is already playing a game in the media about suggestions that Napoli are the Scudetto favourites. As highlighted by Luca Serafini, it’s something AC Milan and the other teams shouldn’t fall for.
It’s been a summer of change in Serie A, with multiple managers switching teams, and that is also what made the season so hard to predict. The only top candidates that have remained fairly stable are Napoli, having retained Conte’s services for at least one more season.
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Despite this, Conte has made it sound like Napoli have changed just as much as anyone else, if not more. It’s a clear game that he’s playing with the media, hoping to throw Milan and other rivals off balance. This was argued by Luca Serafini in his latest editorial for MilanNews.
“It’s not true that the Milan-Napoli result can change the season. On matchday 5, all that matters is the effect it has on the path of a team like Milan, half rebuilt from last season in terms of players, but entirely so when it comes to their playing system and formations.
“Napoli have different foundations and completely different certainties that Antonio Conte hides with his studied lies. He says his team has changed more than the others: we all know that’s not true.
“Only Inter haven’t changed much player-wise, but they have a new coach, new concepts, and a terrible season behind them,” he wrote.
Milan-Napoli is scheduled for Sunday evening and there should be a big crowd at San Siro, with more than 72k tickets sold so far. Max Allegri will be back in the dugout for this one as well, following his two-game suspension.
Well lukaku was like 80% of the team.
Rafa and nkunku should come on in the second half and inject pace on a tiring defense.
at the expense of who? Gimenez sure. You taking off Pulisic?
Depends on a lot of things. Score, fatigue, card accumulation, and the type of performance the player is having on the day.
Conte and Allegri have not faced each other in 12 years. This is going to be a matchup to see if Allegri’s evolution has taken him past Conte’s dominance of him all those years ago.
Inter’s terrible past season, did I read that right? God forbid to be one of the most consistent teams in the last 5 or so years in Europe. Yes they got humiliated in the final, but they managed to get there even after Inzaghi made sure to deplete 120% of the teams energy with no rotations and over reliance of the older guys. No fan of Milan can honestly say that Inter had a terrible season…
Expectations vs. Reality. I’d have been bummed if I was an inter fan, losing the Supercoppa to your arch rivals, losing the scudetto by one point, losing the CL final by 5 goals to nil — a humiliation not seen before in the competition… It’s the fact they were bragging about winning the treble and then walked away with nothing makes it a terrible season in my book..
In no way was it ‘terrible’. There’s a difference between disappointing and terrible.
They were bragging and rightly so. Losing the Supercoppa probably ruined their weekend, let’s not kid ourselves – this cup is meaningless for clubs like ours. They suffered at the end only because they managed to get to the final in CL with a squad that was not fit enough to fight on all 3 fronts. They were better than Napoli and would have deserved to win the title. Were they greatly disappointed – yes, did they have a terrible season – couldn’t be further from reality.