This season’s Serie A title race looks to be finely balanced with none of the three main contenders showing the imperious form to run away at the top, but Inter’s fixture list could give them the advantage.
This according to today’s print edition of Milan-based newspaper Corriere della Sera, who note that there hasn’t been a league leader with so few points at this stage of the season since the 2011-12 season.
After 26 matchdays, AC Milan led in the table with 54 points in the 2011-12 campaign, while eventual winners Juventus sat just behind them on 52 points.
In every season since, at least one team has tended to be head and shoulders above all their rivals, with that team usually having been the Bianconeri until the Nerazzurri took up the mantle last season.
In addition, rivals such as Maurizio Sarri’s Napoli and Luciano Spalletti’s Roma, as well as last season’s Rossoneri side, have often given meaningful challenges to the teams at the top.
This season, however, no team has shown the gulf in quality compared to their rivals to take full control of the Scudetto race at this point in this season, a point underlined over the weekend when all the sides in the top seven positions in the table dropped points.
The run-in will be a test of which of Inter, AC Milan, or Napoli can get past the wobbles in form that have meant that none of the trio have managed to really pull away at the top as of yet.
The Corriere note that, compared to their two main rivals, the Nerazzurri have a comparatively easy fixture list in the Serie A run-in, and they speculate that this could prove key to their gaining enough momentum to finally take control at the top.
