There is no league out of the five that is harder to judge than Italy. While France had standout individuals in specific areas, Germany had a shock overperformance mixed with shock underperformances, England and Spain have a clear hierarchy of clubs, Italy had top performers in every position from a wide range of clubs that performed well. Let’s not delay any further and present the best of the most fiercely competitive league in European football.
The Tom Starke Award: Best Goalkeeper
A final, bitter curse.
This award had some outside shouts such as Pietro Terracciano, Michele Di Gregorio and Ivan Provedel but ultimately no one can stand to Internazionale’s Yann Sommer.
Expect this to be a running theme — a lot of players in the running but Inter’s player coming out on top. Sommer was imperious, unflinchingly saving Inter when called upon. He didn’t have as much work to do as someone like Monza’s Di Gregorio thanks to Inter’s similarly impressive defense, but Sommer was the man who made the difference when the outfield players couldn’t. Sommer’s abilities on the ball remain underrated, too, as while he is no Manuel Neuer — Bayern Munich fans know this first-hand — he is still more than serviceable at facilitating build-up, especially in Inter’s back-three formation with its numerous short passing lanes from the keeper. For what it’s worth, Sommer might just be the best goalkeeper in the world. The spirit of Salus merely watches no longer, now reincarnated in footballing form.
The Dante Award: Best Defender
Clear evidence of treachery long hidden.
This was perhaps the most tightly contested of any award in any league, with top candidates including Giorgio Scalvini, Alessandro Buongiorno, Bremer, and Francesco Acerbi. However, the award falls at the safe feet of Acerbi’s compatriot in defense: Alessandro Bastoni.
Bastoni is a special, special player. There are only a handful centre-backs in modern football who radiate the aura of an all-time great, but Bastoni is surely one of them. Relieved of his vocal and last-man duties with the assimilation of Acerbi into the regular starting XI, Bastoni was let loose to terrorise the opposition. Simply put, Inter’s left half-space was a dead zone for teams. Bastoni’s athleticism and tackling ability made it impossible to make inroads through this area, and the Italian could then turn around and dribble through opponents to cause havoc as an auxiliary midfielder past the first line of the press and sometimes even between the lines. Simone Inzaghi’s system has shown the true potential of wide centre-backs in the modern game with their ability to affect play from inside the opposition’s block rather than sitting outside it, and no player exemplifies it as well as Bastoni (well, perhaps Benjamin Pavard, but the Frenchman didn’t get enough minutes to warrant this spot). A true warrior, brave and beating with the heart of Mars himself.
The Xabi Alonso Award: Best Midfielder
So far are we along the path, that I must strain to hear the clumsy patter of their feet.
Another very competitive award, there were several good candidates, chief among them Adrien Rabiot and Teun Koopmeiners. However, none were in the same plane as Internazionale’s Hakan Çalhanoğlu.
In Inter’s first phase of build-up with its many moving parts, the one constant was Çalhanoğlu. The former attacking midfielder has transformed into perhaps the finest deep lying playmaker in the world, becoming the centre of Inter’s play. Çalhanoğlu set up all of Inter’s play through his positioning in the first phase, quickly being able to move the ball into the second and third phases of play through his amazing ability to spot players and spaces up the pitch. Çalhanoğlu may not be the most gifted defensively, but he never needed to be as Inter’s backline was always ready to cover in numbers. With every player moving into advanced areas, it was Çalhanoğlu who, inhabiting the spirit of Janus, opened all the doors for the team to create chances from deep.
The Franck Ribéry Award: Best Attacker
Know this, my brothers.
Italy has attacking quality bursting out of every team, almost any team in the top half could’ve had a player take this, whether its Marcus Thuram, Rafael Leão, Charles De Ketelaere, Joshua Zirkzee, Nicolás González or even Paulo Dybala who perhaps came closest but couldn’t take the crown from last year’s winner, Napoli’s Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.
The Georgian was the singular light in a very, very difficult time for Napoli, finishing tenth. The defense fell off a cliff after the loss of Min-jae Kim, the midfield lost its identity completely and the attacking structure was non-existent without Victor Osimhen, but through it all, Kvara was there, endangering opposition full-backs with his tricky movement and even trickier feet. Whether its through his dribbling, his movement, his ability to spot passes from seemingly impossible angles and then execute those passes, or even his ability to let shots loose from ahead of the defense. Through the roaring tempest, Napoli’s own Vulcan creates his weapons from the wind and chaos.
The Luca Toni Award: Italy’s Player of the Year
They may foul the way with their charred and broken bones, but they will not stop the Journey.
The crown jewel of an overwhelmingly dominant season from Internazionale was the performance of one Lautaro Martínez.
Just pure perfection. Lautaro was creative, dangerous, direct, powerful and precise. Lautaro pressed his life out for the team, sat back in structure when required, dribbled through tight spaces when options weren’t open, held the ball when spaces were open for teammates to run into, recycled possession when spaces weren’t open, was able to create chances from between the lines but chiefly, was able to spot scoring chances for himself quicker than anyone. 24 goals is no joke, but it is way more impressive when one realises that scoring is such a small part of his play. Possessing complete control of time and space in the final third, Internazionale’s Saturn.
What do you think of our picks? Is there anyone you would have picked instead? Let us know in the discussion below.