Inter defender Federico Dimarco is anticipating that the upcoming Serie A season will be a difficult and unusual one due to being cut in half by the winter World Cup.

Speaking to Italian broadcaster DAZN, the 24-year-old gave his thoughts on the nature of the schedule which sees two gruelling condensed periods with a long break in between for the World Cup.

This year the World Cup will be held in the winter rather than over the summer, and the club football calendar has been reconfigured to accommodate this unprecedented development.

Teams will play around three months of football across all competitions between the middle of August and the middle of November, and then return in January to play out the rest of the campaign which will hardly be less frantic particularly given the cup competitions.

Dimarco expects that this will play a very big part in how the team’s season goes, stating that “It will be a difficult season, divided into two parts, so we must take advantage of all our opportunities during the season.”

“Everyone has ambition to win,” he continued, “we just think about ourselves, trying to prove our worth.”

Of the Nerazzurri’s biggest title rivals, Dimarco named “Juve who have had a very high-level transfer window, Milan are an excellent team, and then there are Roma, Fiorentina, and Napoli.”