With the news that Serie A is to return from its hiatus on Saturday June 20th, the focus once again turns to an enthralling title race and with attention now on Italy’s top flight, live dealer casino games in NJ will soon have to share gambling’s already crowded landscape.
This season’s race for the Scudetto sees two significant protagonists in what can only be labeled as a heavyweight clash. In the red corner, are defending champions Juventus and sitting opposite them in the blue corner, are nearest challengers Lazio.
However, to label Juventus as just the defending champions would be doing them something of a disservice. When you consider that they have won the last eight editions of Serie A, it will take a brave man or woman to bet against them this season.
Then again, one should not forget how tight it is at the top. With current leaders Juventus, finding themselves with just a single point advantage over Lazio, this latest battle for Italian footballing supremacy is far from over.
Of course, the great equalizer in this season’s quest for the Scudetto is the enforced slumber that football has had to take. Although the Belarusian Premier League seems to defy scientific reason, Serie A has not been so fortunate.
At the time when the hiatus was called, 12 rounds of fixtures were still to be contested, and with the play button set to be pressed in just a few weeks, the potential for mid-summer drama now seems incredibly high.
For Juventus, it’s a case of whether Maurizio Sarri can take on what some view as the easiest job in world football – one where you just have to pick eleven players and sit back while they do the talking on the playing field. However, as the ‘Old Lady of Turin’ has been so domestically dominant, no one wants to be the man in charge when the title streak finally does come to an end.
If Sarri, who last season won the Europa League with Chelsea – an achievement that saw the now 61-year-old win his first-ever piece of silverware as a manager, fails to extend Juventus’ Serie A streak to an incredible nine in a row, his managerial stock is in danger of plummeting rapidly.
Not only that, but you would have to assume that should this be the case, the former Napoli boss will also be shown the exit door in double-quick time. Especially when you consider that his employers have said goodbye to previous managers after they had far higher levels of success.
You only need to go as far back as the man who previously filled the Juventus Stadium hot-seat and the way that he was eventually unceremoniously dumped from his position as one of the world’s greatest touchline technicians.
The man in question is Massimiliano Allegri, and even after winning the last five of Juventus’ recent octo-championship run, it was his ultimate failure to land the coveted Champions League trophy, that meant it was time to get a fresh face installed.
Sarri’s tenure in charge of the black and white has not been anything in the way of swashbuckling, but it certainly has been pragmatic. Although they are not winning over critics in mass quantity, they certainly are winning where it matters.
In the first half of the season, it looked as if it was going to be another former Juve boss who would offer the sternest challenge, and although Antonio Conte’s new charges started well, Inter Milan look like they will have to make do with a top-four finish this time around.
That is why the rest of the country seems to be pledging their allegiance to the relative upstarts. If Lazio can land their first league title since the turn of the new millennium, it will be a success celebrated in all corners of Italy.
Until the first few balls are kicked in anger, there will be no way of knowing how the pause in proceedings will have affected the momentum of either side. If Juve do slip up soon after the league’s restart, then it is very much game on. However, unlike Lazio, the team are seasoned veterans in crunch periods like this and it would be fair to say that anything other than a ninth crown in a row would be a real shock.
