Who will win Serie A this season? Juventus or Lazio

Football has started again after 3 months of a break due to lockdown because of the COVD-19 pandemic. Although the COVD-19 pandemic is still going football has started only due to the fact that no crowd is allowed to watch the games in the stadium.

Serie A is a league that has been continuously dominated by Juventus who have won it for the last 9 years. The last time any other team the Serie A title was in 2010-11 season. Since then it is only Juventus who have been lifting the title.

They have won most of the titles with a huge margin on the points table. It was only in 2011/12, 2016/17, and 2017/18 seasons where they won the league by a margin of fewer than 6 points. On three occasions there were three different teams closing in on Juventus in the title race. First, it was Ac Milan who was the winner of the season before Juventus won. They closed in on Juventus with 4 points. In 2016/17 it was Roma who came close to them with 4 points margin again. In 2017/18 season Napoli was the side who challenged Juve for the title race and they also fell short with 4 points. Rest of the seasons they were way ahead of the other teams in the competition. The reason for that is the downfall of the best clubs in Italy with the likes of Ac Milan and Inter Milan not performing to the standard they set in the past decades.

This is not just a problem in Italy. Bundesliga and League 1 in France also has the same problem. Only one team is dominating the league for years and it doesn't look like changing in the near future. Bundesliga has been dominated by Bayern Munich for years and French league by PSG.

But if we talk about this season then there is a slight change in terms of competitiveness. It is not that the teams in the league have performed at their best but it is due to Juventus's bad run of form in between the season. They have not performed to the standard which was imagined by their fans and a lot on analysts. They have been pretty average this season.

There is a team that has surprised the champions by their performance is Lazio. They are the only ones who can challenge Juventus for the title race. They have scored the second-highest number goals in the league where their top scorer Ciro Immobile has scored 27 goals alone. He is also the top scorer in the league and is a strong contender to win the Uefa golden boot race.



Juventus are 4 points ahead of them at the moment. Lazio still has one game in their hand. If we see their performance before the suspension of the league they were on the top of their game. They are yet to play their first game after the lockdown. Their first game is against Atlanta on Thursday. It will be a must-win game for them.

The remaining games for both of them are on equal terms if we check the difficult factor. Lazio's difficult games will be against Atalanta, Ac Milan, Juventus, and Napoli. For Juventus, they still have to face Atalanta, Milan, Lazio, and Roma in their last game of the season. Match between Juventus and Lazio will be on 20th July. That will pretty much be the league decider if both the teams win their remaining matches.



At the start of the season, no one really thought that Lazio will be the team who will chase Juventus so far in the competition. Also, Juventus has been below par the expectations there fans had with them.

Juventus bought Cristiano Ronaldo in the 2018 season from Real Madrid so that they can get the energy and motivation and also experience that they were lacking to win the champions league for so many years. After his arrival, everyone expected something new from their team. But, even the arrival of Cristiano couldn't change their luck. They stayed the same old Juventus and were knocked out badly by Ajax.

If we look at the stats of the last five years of the top 5 leagues, then we come to know that only 6 out of 25 titles have been won by 6 or less than points. On the other occasions competition was very low. Only La Liga and the Premier League have some competitiveness. La Liga has teams like Real Madrid and Barcelona who compete for the title every time. In the premier league, there are 5 to 6 teams who compete for it.

This season Juventus has scored 52 goals in 27 games with an average of 1.92 which is below par for a team of their standard. On the other hand, Lazio has an average of 2+ goals per game.

Conclusion:

It is true that Juventus are not in their best form but still they are the best team in Italy. In terms of squad depth, they are one of the best in Europe. Only Real Madrid has more depth in the squad than them. If some players get injured they have the backups. Like if we see the current scenario, Chiellini, Higuain, and Khedira are out of the squad but they have world-class substitutes for them. For Chiellini Juve has De Ligt and for Higuain and Khedira they have the likes of Ramsey, Rabiot, and many more players.

Also, Lazio will fall short somewhere down the line against Juventus. Juve is the favorites to win their personal battle on 20th July.



So, for us, Juventus will be the winners of the league and will lift 10th straight Serie A trophy.