They used to call it the "most beautiful championship in the world". Yet, Serie A, whose league season kicks off tonight (Bologna v Atalanta), has recently earned itself a wide variety of less flattering epithets.
After an annus horribilus, distinguished by match-fixing, doping and passport scandals, not to mention racist fan behaviour and a total whitewash in European competitions, Italian soccer sets out on the rehabilitation trail this weekend.
Leading the charge this season will be newly-crowned champions, AS Roma, who, appropriately enough, will face their first serious test when they open their Champions League account at home to mighty Spanish champions, Real Madrid, in 10 days' time.
In the meantime, however, Fabio Capello's team open their Serie A season with a rather less testing engagement, away to Verona tomorrow night.
Not surprisingly, Roma are the least changed member of the Italian elite, fielding a side that will again look to the likes ofArgentine defender Walter Samuel, midfield worker Damiano Tommasi, playmaker Francesco Totti and sharpshooters Vincenzo Montella and Argentine ace Gabriel Batistuta.
In a Serie A title contest which even at this early stage would appear to concern only five clubs - Roma, Lazio, Inter Milan, AC Milan and Juventus, and not in that order - the reigning champions may give domestic ground to their rivals, preferring instead to concentrate on the Champions League, a trophy they painfully lost to Liverpool in a penalty shoot-out conclusion to the 1984 final, played in their own Olympic Stadium in Rome.
After two seasons of Rome domination, with Lazio having won the 2000 title, this could well be a year when the pendulum swings back north again, in the all-too-familiar direction of either Milan or Turin.
Both "Old Lady" Juventus and AC Milan start off this season thirsty for success after two rare lean seasons, marked by humiliation in European competition.
Notwithstanding the sale of French wizard Zinedine Zidane to Real Madrid, Juventus look set to be Roma's number one challenger.
The return of their successful coach of the 1990s, Marcello Lippi, plus the purchase of four quality players in goalkeeper Gigi Buffon (Parma), French defender Lilian Thuram (Parma), Czech midfielder Pavel Nedved (Lazio) and Chilean striker Marcelo Salas (Lazio) all represent good reasons for suggesting that the "Old Lady" will do well this year, both at home and abroad, and starting with a home fixture against Venezia tomorrow afternoon.
AC Milan, too, have been active this summer buying some class acts such as Portuguese playmaker Rui Costa (Fiorentina), striker Filippo Inzaghi (Juventus), Spaniard Javi Moreno (Alaves) and Romanian Cosmin Contra (Alaves).
Furthermore, like Juventus, they have opted for an intriguing new coach in the person of Turkey's Fatih Terim, who opens his account away to Roberto Baggio's Brescia tomorrow.
A serious question mark inevitably hangs over the head of Lazio, at home to Piacenza tomorrow. It remains to be seen if new acquisitions such as Spanish midfielder Gaizka Mendieta, Brazilian Cesar and Italian international Stefano Fiore can compensate for the departure of Nedved, Salas and above all, Argentine playmaker Sebastien Veron (Manchester United).
Finally, there is Inter Milan. Galvanised by yet another new coach in Argentine Hector Cuper, formerly of Valencia, and with yet another batch of new players such as goalkeeper Francesco Toldo (Fiorentina), Brazilian striker Adriano (Flamengo), Sierra Leone striker Mohammed Kallon (Vicenza) and Turkish midfielders Emre and Okan (Galatasaray), Inter have been performing well in pre-season friendlies.
For Inter, however, undoubtedly their best news concerns not a new player but rather the one who stayed - namely striker Christian Vieri. Starting from tomorrow at home to Perugia, Vieri will be leading the Inter charge, with or without Brazilian ace Ronaldo, destined to return to full action sometime this autumn.
Meanwhile, lest anyone forget last year's annus horribilus, the new season has already begun as the old ended, with Parma eliminated from the Champions League in mid-week and with one coach, veteran Carlo Mazzone at Brescia, handing in his cards on Thursday because of fan intimidation that became so hostile that he had to move around with a police escort.
Plus ca change, plus . . .
