Summer deals have left last season’s Champions League semi-finalists imbalanced and time is not on the manager’s sideFive games in, and the Serie A top scorers chart has a decidedly unfamiliar feel. Fans might have expected to see Cristiano Ronaldo in first place, perhaps pursued by the man he displaced at Juventus: Gonzalo Higuaín. Or how about reigning joint-capocannonieri, Ciro Immobile and Mauro Icardi, each returning with the same teams?All but the last of that foursome scored this weekend, yet none of them leads the way. The most prolific player in Serie A is a 23-year-old signed by Genoa from Cracovia this summer for a paltry €4.5m. Krzysztof Piatek’s five goals only look more impressive when you consider his team...
Inter began this season billed as the team most likely to deny Juve another Scudetto, but things already look gloomyCristiano Ronaldo’s first Serie A goal arrived right on schedule. Granted, it might not have felt that way to the Juventus supporters who had been waiting impatiently for this moment since July. But by opening his account in their fourth league game, with his 28th shot of the season, he was emulating precisely the start he made with Real Madrid in 2017-18.Nobody can truly have believed his ‘drought’ would go on forever, yet the relief at its ending was evident even in Ronaldo’s performance. His first goal was a tap-in: described by Tuttosport as “pushed into an empty net from 30cm...
Never before in this era of domestic domination have they established sole possession of first place so early in a campaignTime to release the confetti, pass out the champagne and discover what clunky social media pun Juventus have planned to follow on from #Le6end and #My7th. The Bianconeri are champions of Italy for the eighth consecutive year. Or so you might think, thumbing through some of the coverage of a weekend when they moved two points clear at the top.“There is no anti-Juve,” declared the front page of Gazzetta dello Sport on Monday. Inside the pink paper, Sebastiano Vernazza lamented: “Serie A seems to have become a close relative of the Belorussian league, where Bate Borisov have won for 12...
On Ronaldo’s debut, the Bianconeri started fast at Chievo, lost their way in the middle but ultimately found a way to winAt last, the real thing. A month had passed since Cristiano Ronaldo touched down in Turin, placing Juventus and Serie A back at the centre of the football world’s attentions. Fans logged on in their millions just to see him walking on a treadmill at his medical, losing a game of foot-tennis in training and singing Portuguese pop at his team initiation.His marketing impact was obvious. Now, though, it was time to find out what he had to offer on the pitch. That Ronaldo should begin with a trip to the Stadio Marcantonio Bentegodi felt apt. This was where...
To pay such a sum for a player surely past his peak seems a risk but the Italian champions have not made many mistakes latelyCristiano Ronaldo described it in matter-of-fact terms as “the moment to begin a new cycle”. In Italy the headline writers went a little bigger as they hailed Juventus’s capture of the Portugal forward as “the deal of the century”.Even the club’s most optimistic supporters might not have dreamed such a thing possible at the start of this summer. A five-times Ballon d’Or winner coming to Turin? No Serie A player had even finished among the top three vote winners for that award since Kaká won it in 2007. Related: Cristiano Ronaldo joining Juventus in €100m deal...