Which Serie A clubs enjoyed a great summer Mercato?
The summer of 2012 seemed to start so well for Italian football. Onlookers and fans had finally witnessed traditional powerhouses Juventus shrug off the crippling effects of Calciopoli to return to winning ways at long last, pipping former-champions AC Milan to the Scudetto by a hair’s breadth. A sensational showing by Cesare Prandelli’s Italy national team that took the Azzurri all the way to the final of Euro 2012 followed, only seeming to additionally confirm one thing: Serie A was undergoing its belated, much-anticipated renaissance.
Disaster was swift to strike next, however. Only the greatest detractors in football would have forecasted what was to happen, when Calcio was violated to the very bone as the cash-rich overtures of Paris Saint-Germain extended into Serie A, poaching the likes of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Thiago Silva, Ezequiel Lavezzi and Marco Verratti in order to fuel its own growth. Immediately back to square one for Italian football, it would have seemed; the Serie A summer transfer market was initially beginning to appear defined by who was to leave, rather than who arrived to further the revolution.
Nevertheless, some stellar work by several clubs determined to reverse the rut, strengthening themselves even as other weakened, saved the league from being the latest condemned to becoming a feeder system in the increasingly commercialised world of modern football. Forza Italian Football takes a look at six outstanding transfer campaigns of the summer that so helped capture the imagination of their respective fan sets to restore hope again, aiding decisively to boost the level of football spectators can look forward to in Serie A.
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