By: Christian Rivas

So with this title I’m thinking to myself where do I begin? Which conundrum of confusion do I want to talk about? To point out a few, we have; Inter and their midfield… Juve and Ronaldo… Milan and their carousel of coaches…Roma and their awkward state….. Napoli and their inability to win games anymore….

Let’s start with Inter’s current midfield conundrum. Looking at Inter’s current midfield situation, the main question is when does Sensi come back? Who’s going to take over Barella’s role in the midfield? A lot of unanswered questions, we can’t depend on Vecino, Gagliardini, and old man Valero. Mind you the 3 of these players are quality on their days, but that’s the thing when has it been their day? It’s been a while since either one of these players have really been on their game lately. With that said, I believe that Lukaku and Toro will carry the team with Brozovic as neither one of these three players is good enough to do it on their own. There still remains a huge issue at hand…we don’t know when Sensi will be back. We can only hope that Sensi makes it back in time for Roma and Barcelona.

Now looking at other clubs with their current conundrums the biggest question that needs to be answered is at Juventus. Ronaldo’s place at Juve. He’s injured, yet he can play for Portugal. So it makes you wonder, how dedicated is he? What’s his true purpose there now and is he going to push for an exit in the summer? It all seems certain now he wants out of Juventus. Maybe a Juve fan can counter my assessment about Ronaldo’s actual dedication to the Bianconeri. It seems to me that Juventus play better with Dybala than Ronaldo, as we continue to see a resurgence in La Joya.

Moving on to Milan. In this question of the giants, well, in this case a fallen giant. Milan’s issues in my opinion has been coaching. I’ve been saying this for a while now and I’ve been pressing the issue about it being a mistake to let go of Gattuso. I personally think Milan would be in third place if Gattuso was still coaching this Milan. It is an improved team from last year but Milan is built for Gatuso’s style not Pioli. I’m curious if Milan will be able to start catching themselves and save their season. Champions League, in my opinion, is out the question for our neighbors but Europa is still attainable and maybe this time they will actually be able to participate.

Roma is a team in one of those awkward phases right now, they have a good mix of youth and experience. For some reason though, they haven’t taken the next step into advancing and becoming a top four team once again. They possess a defense that has filled the hole left by Manolas, with Chris Smalling. This is a surprise as he (just like Lukaku and Alexis) is finding a resurgence in Serie A at clubs currently in a healthy state. Roma just doesn’t seem to be able to find any form of consistency and their approach to each game is questionable. You see them go toe to toe with some big teams but against the small they seem to falter. The question on everyone’s mind is when will Roma finally grow up as a club and come out mediocrity? As the team named after the capital city of the country with following, you’d expect them to finally behave like a big club! This is a team that recently knocked out Barcelona and made a final four run in the Champions League… But, instead of building on such an accomplishment, they seem to have regressed and aren’t moving forward, this will forever be one of the biggest conundrums in Serie A for years to come.

Finally we have arrived to Napoli. Who would’ve thought that I would be sitting down at my laptop in the Washington DC area the day after thanksgiving writing about Napoli in a negative way. No, honestly, this club a few years ago looked ready to finally win a Scudetto and dethrone Juve’s dominance over the peninsula. But NOOOOOOOO here I am scratching my head as to how far Napoli have fallen, to the point they’re now behind Cagliari. No really…. they’re behind Cagliari and are effectively out of the title race so early in the season. At best they can hope to reach a UCL spot. You would think this would be a three horse title race between Napoli, Inter, and Juve, but in actuality it’s a two horse race and Napoli isn’t part of it. The Napoli faithful were expecting to be fighting for the title this year, especially after boosting the roster this season and bringing in Manolas from rivals Roma, and El Chucky Lozano from PSV. A huge coupe as he’s a top Mexican talent and this year he’s shown that Napoli can depend on him showing up. Instead of us talking about how great this Napoli team is, we’re here talking about how disappointing they are. Easily this seasons biggest disappointment, they went and got a great coach in Ancelotti last year. You’d expect them to start churning results but instead we’re hearing about mutiny (no not the Tampa Bay Mutiny) in the locker room. This isn’t something you want to hear from a team that should be carrying the Italian flag in UCL and progressing out of there group. I hope Napoli figure it out because it would be tragic if they don’t make it to the Champions League next season, as much as I would want Cagliari or Atalanta to grow and make it next year.

