Serie A has produced three different champions in the last five seasons and Italy’s top flight remains one of the continent’s most compelling competitions, despite ongoing concerns over its overall quality.No Italian team made it past the last 16 of last season’s Champions League. Napoli failed to make it out of the league phase while Inter Milan suffered a shocking loss to Bodø/Glimt. Only Atalanta made it further than the first knockout round and they conceded 10 goals over two legs against Bayern Munich.Coupled with the Italian national team’s continued World Cup exile, there is widespread debate about the standard of the sport in the country and whether the glory days will ever be witnessed again.It’s against this backdrop that the 2026/27 Serie A season will kick off on Saturday, August 22, and the favourites to win are Inter Milan.At 10/11 they are fancied to retain the title they won last season. Manager Cristian Chivu has built on the foundations left behind by Simone Inzaghi to keep the Nerazzurri competitive at the top of the Italian game, with Inter still dangerous in quick transition. On their day, Chivu’s team are capable of hurting any opponent.There were, however, times last season when Inter appeared weary. Many of their best players are now on the wrong side of 30 (see Hakan Çalhanoğlu, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Piotr Zieliński) and this summer’s transfer activity hasn’t been comprehensive enough to bring down the squad’s average age.Denzel Dumfries, Stefan de Vrij, Francesco Acerbi, Matteo Darmian and Yann Sommer have departed San Siro. The 21-year-old midfielder, Aleksandar Stanković, has arrived to provide some fresh blood, but John Stones is the biggest signing Inter have made so far this summer — and he’s 32.