Juventus far from imperious but still lead the chasing pack — Serie A winter break review

Gonzalo Higuain's arrival as the big-money replacement for Paul Pogba, has helped keep Juventus ahead of their title rivals. Valerio Pennicino / Getty Images

As Serie A enters its winter break, Ian Hawkey looks at how the Italian league season is shaping up so far.

From the warmth of Doha as they awaited Friday night’s Qatar-hosted Italian Super Cup final, Serie A champions Juventus surveyed with mild satisfaction a cracker of a contest back home that closed the Serie A year.

Fiorentina versus Napoli, on Thursday, had six goals, terrific see-saw drama right to the very close, and by the end, two of the top division’s most entertaining sides had one point apiece.

Gripping though it may have been, third-placed Napoli missed out on two points in their pursuit of Juventus at the top.

Roma meanwhile stand four points off the leaders in second place, still ruing last weekend’s narrow defeat to Juve that ensured the champions would sit happy at the top going into 2017.

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Chasing Juve’s serial winners can be a dispiriting business, and the indications already are that Juventus, with a game in hand over Roma and Napoli, are minded to give fewer teasing glimpses of their vulnerability to all the rest than they did when they made their very patchy start to the defence of their 2015 title.

Sure, Massimiliano Allegri’s team have suffered three defeats in their 17 matches so far this season. Sure, Napoli and Roma are outscoring them, but there is steel in those black and white stripes that is hard to bend.

Juve are accustomed to looking over their shoulders at either Roma or Napoli, and knowing they can cope with either.

Meanwhile, a future time where Inter Milan or AC Milan recover lost ground in terms of prestige, and become the most muscular challengers still appears a while away. Inter have had a turbulent year, and are on their third manager of 2016, Stefano Piolo.

They lost Roberto Mancini in the summer and then dismissed Frank de Boer, the Dutchman lasting just 11 Serie A games.

Inter, without a league title since their 2010 treble, have not, it can be safely reported, yet provided quite the yield their various foreign owners anticipated since the club turned to courting significant investors four years back.

AC Milan are looking that way now. They took their biggest stride away from the governance of president Silvio Berlusconi, although their proposed takeover by a Chinese consortium will not be completed before March.

By then, Milan’s prospects of displacing Roma and Napoli from the top three, the Uefa Champions League-eligible positions should be clearer.

Under Vicenzo Montella, Milan have looked bright, and, in a break from some of their recruitment habits of recent years, rather youthful and with a broader spread of Italian talent.

Some of the younger club members of Serie A have less to feel positive about.

Take Sassuolo, who followed up their historic place in European competition with a falling away, both in the Europa League and domestically, as if the air has been let out of their gravity-defying balloon.

As for the champions, they said goodbye to Paul Pogba in the summer, but, right now, would back the quality of the buy made with a large chunk of the proceeds of that sale, Gonzalo Higuain.

He is helping Juventus maintain their high standards, domestically at least.

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