Perched at the top of the Serie A table are two surprise teams at the moment – Juventus and Udinese.
Both are still unbeaten and lead the way on 11 points after five league outings.
Despite selling key players Christian Zapata (Villarreal), Gokhan Inler (Napoli) and Alexis Sanchez (Barcelona) in summer, Udinese continued where they had left off last season under the charge of the wily Francesco Guidolin.
Udinese, perhaps, started their campaign on a bad footing when failing to reach the group stages of the Champions League but did not waste time to make up for that upset as they took the domestic league by storm besides a promising start to their Europa League group.
Sleeping giants Juventus have been in great form this season.
They dropped four points so far following identical 1-1 draws with Bologna and Catania. But, Antonio Conte’s side won the rest of their fixtures against Parma (4-1), Siena (1-0) and Milan (2-0).
But is this Juventus team strong enough to keep up their momentum and make a creditable quest for a top-three finish or, even more, challenge for the scudetto?
Conte was a good choice and is doing a brilliant job.
This is a testing time for him in only his second stint with a top division club. He knows of the magnitude of his task in reviving the fortunes of the ‘Old Lady’.
The 42-year-old, unlike his immediate predecessors Ciro Ferrara, Alberto Zaccheroni and Luigi Delneri, did not take too much time to instil a winning mentality in his players, deploying an attack-minded formation irrespective of Juve’s opponents on the day.
And the players have responded positively to Conte’s tactics.
If the first few fixtures of the season are anything to go by, then it is safe to say that most of the players at Juve have already fitted perfectly in Conte’s 4-1-4-1 module.
Commitment
Besides, the team is showing great commitment to put the club back on the right track after years in the shadows of Milan and Inter.
The Bianconeri, stripped of their 2005 and 2006 titles, have not won the scudetto since 2002-03.
Apart from being crowned Serie B champions in 2007, their last piece of silverware was the Italian Super Cup in 2003, won at the expense of Milan after a 5-3 penalty shoot-out at the Giants Stadium in the US.
With Conte now in the limelight, some critics also indulged in making comparisons between him and former Juve great Marcello Lippi.
When first taking over in Turin, Lippi had led Juventus to their first scudetto after a nine-year absence in 1994/95. That was to mark the start of a new era for the Bianconeri at home and on the continent.
Conte was Juve’s team captain during Lippi’s tenure at Juventus.
Would he follow in the same footsteps of his master?
Although it is still too premature to say, the indications are en-couraging to say the least.
Conte is a modest person by nature and keeps playing down his side’s remarkable progress to date, insisting that other teams like Milan and Inter are stronger and are not in the same rebuilding process as Juve because their players have been together for a long time.
At Juve, Conte is gradually gelling his new players into a unit and that includes Stephan Lichtsteiner, Andrea Pirlo, Eljero Elia, Arturo Vidal, Mirko Vucinic and Emanuele Giaccherini.
Some, in particular Lichtsteiner and Pirlo, have already left their mark on the team.
Proof of the good work being done by Conte is the fact that on Friday, in Italy’s Euro 2012 qualifier away at Serbia (1-1), national team coach Cesare Prandelli deployed no fewer than six Juventus players – Gianluigi Buffon, Giorgio Chiellini, Andrea Barzagli, Leonardo Bonucci, Claudio Mar-chisio and Andrea Pirlo – in his starting line-up.
Marchisio, a club product, scored the opener in Belgrade.
The omens are indeed good for Juventus this season.
One still has to assess their consistency levels over a wider span but this season they have an edge over the likes of Milan, Inter, Napoli, Udinese and Lazio in that they are not participating in European competitions.
Conte and the Bianconeri need to exploit this advantage and stay focused all the way through if they are to bring back the glory days of the past.