Rewind to the end of October, and there was a genuine competition for The Worst Defence of a League Title in Europe.
Italy’s Juventus, after four successive scudetti, looked even poorer impersonators of champions than England’s Chelsea.
They had lost key players in the summer and apparently lost their identity and bearings. Four defeats and three draws in their opening 10 matches left Juve adrift.
The effect was galvanising on several aspiring title candidates seeing the clearest glimpse in half a decade of the possibility of breaking Juve’s long-term grip on the championship.
Juve’s poor start has made the jostle at the top of Serie A especially compelling. Roma, runners-up last year, were the first to spring into the vacuum but have since been overtaken by a clutch of opportunists in Inter Milan, Fiorentina and Napoli. When the winter break begins on Monday, the top four could conceivably be separated by just three points.
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If that is the case, then there will still be several expert observers who fancy the staying power not of leaders Inter – defensively sound under Roberto Mancini, their coach – nor Napoli or Fiorentina. Instead they will stump for the group of players with most established know-how at consolidating a run of form.
And that is Juventus, who on Sunday chase a seventh league win on the trot when they visit second-bottom side Carpi.
Juve’s roll is bookended by two stirring local derby wins.
In between Wednesday night’s 4-0 Coppa Italia thrashing of neighbours Torino and the Serie A defeat of the same opponents at the beginning of November is a run of eight uninterrupted wins in domestic football and a considerable reduction in the number of wistful mentions, among supporters, of the names Andrea Pirlo, Arturo Vidal and Carlos Tevez, the departed trio to whose absence the sudden decline of the late summer and early autumn had been attributed.
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Some recalibrating was always going to be necessary given the loss of such influential men.
What has encouraged Massimiliano Allegri, the Juve coach, is the rising confidence of some of the newcomers.
Simone Zaza, signed from Sassuolo in the summer and an Italy international, scored two goals in the midweek derby, and commented afterwards he felt reassured he had a role in a side he has flitted in and out of.
Juan Cuadrado, recruited from Chelsea, has also played his part in the upturn. His late winner against Torino at the outset of the winning run provided an important impulse.
On Wednesday there was a fifth goal in his past six domestic matches for Paulo Dybala, the dainty Argentine signed from Palermo for close to €35 million (Dh139m).
At the depth of Juve’s crisis, Dybala had been advised by his previous employer, the outspoken Palermo president Maurizio Zamparini, to make plans to leave Juventus.
Dybala, with his boyish face, is not ready for comparison yet with the gnarled Tevez, who was the club’s leading scorer in the past two campaigns, but he is performing with elan.
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Allegri feels a buoyancy, and that the squad have been fortified by their earlier setbacks. “Sometimes when you have been travelling on a downwards path, it can end up guiding you upwards,” he said, rather philosophically, after the rout of Torino.
Allegri hopes, in the second half a campaign in which a Uefa Champions League last-16 tie against Bayern Munich now looms large in February, that other newcomers such as Sami Khedira, who has suffered from injury, and the Brazilian Hernanes will impose themselves more consistently.
The fixture list looks kind for when they return from the recess: Carpi are the first of four clubs currently in the bottom six places in the table on the agenda for the champions.
Allegri, meanwhile, is enjoying a burnished reputation again. He is reported to be on the recruitment agenda of a club desperately in need of a coach to remind them how to act like champions: Chelsea.
PLAYER TO WATCH - JOAQUIN (REAL BETIS)
Happy homecoming
Joaquin rejoined Betis, from Fiorentina in the summer. Twenty thousand fans came to his unveiling, and he has again become the figurehead of the squad, who won promotion back to the Primera Liga last June. “I’ve made more public appearances in the last few months than [Spanish prime minister] Mariano Rajoy,” he joked.
Wing wizard
Joaquin started his career as a flying winger, a player who set pulses racing. He voyaged around Spain and Europe before returning to the Andalusia of his birth, and to his first club. He may still have a little more of his youthful turn of pace and touchline-hugging instincts than Sevilla’s Jose Antonio Reyes, who has a strong bond with Sevillistas, but less of the charisma Beticos have always liked in Joaquin.
Gifted generation
Joaquin was once considered among the most admired Spanish players of his generation. A near-contemporary of the likes of Xavi, late of Barcelona, and Xabi Alonso, of Real Madrid and then Bayern Munich, he made his Betis debut at 19 and was only 20 when he was representing Spain at the 2002 World Cup.
International void
Joaquin would not join Xavi and the rest in conquering a series of international tournaments between 2008 and 2012. He almost certainly suffered for publicly criticising the then national coach, Luis Aragones, and never added to his 51 caps after saying the team were “a mess” and Aragones “struggled to deal with it”.
Italian adventure
But many club managers found he had something special to offer. A stint at Valencia had several highs – including a Copa del Rey, a trophy he also won in his first Betis spell – and he played Uefa Champions League football with Malaga. He thrilled Serie A audiences during two years at Fiorentina, who he left in June, having enjoyed a good run in the Europa League.
GAME OF THE WEEK - HANNOVER v BAYERN MUNICH
Struggling Hannover have the chance to take advantage of jaded Bayern Munich on Saturday and secure their first win over the German league leaders for four years.
Bayern head to Hannover for their final game of 2015 with a five-point lead at the top of the table, but with Pep Guardiola’s Bavarian giants conceding fatigue is a factor.
“We’ll pick ourselves up once again and give it our all to take the three points from Hanover, even if we haven’t got many players left,” said Germany forward Thomas Muller.
Bayern are missing injured stars Franck Ribery, Mario Goetze, Juan Bernat and David Alaba for their final match before the month-long winter break starts.
Regardless of the result in Hannover, Bayern will be top of the table at Christmas for the fifth year in succession with goalkeeper Manuel Neuer set to make his 300th Bundesliga appearance.
Having struggled to a 2-0 league win over Ingolstadt last Saturday, Bayern laboured to a 1-0 German Cup win over Darmstadt on Tuesday to book their quarter-final place. It kept alive their dreams of winning the treble of Uefa Champions League, Bundesliga and cup titles this season. Muller conceded the Darmstadt win “was not a Gala performance” while captain Philipp Lahm says the Bayern squad has been running low on energy for weeks.
“The players’ condition isn’t so great, because we’ve played a lot of games,” said Lahm. “Of course, we’re looking forward to the winter break and we’re finding it a bit hard at the moment.”
Despite tired limbs, Bayern should beat Hannover, who are third from bottom, have suffered 10 defeats this season and last managed to beat Bayern in 2011.
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