Ever since returning to Serie A following their demotion for match-fixing, Juventus have had a terrible run in the transfer market.

Third and second-placed finishes in their two years back in the top flight are largely thanks to players who stuck with Juve during their season in Serie B such as Alessandro Del Piero and Giorgio Chiellini.

In contrast, new recruits such as midfielders Tiago and Christian Poulsen have been frustrating at best while former Aston Villa defender Olof Mellberg lasted just a season before being shipped off to Olympiakos.

Juve have also tried to sell Poulsen and Tiago but both players have said they would rather stay.

Right back Zdenek Grygera has not convinced all the Juve faithful while striker Amauri had a good start to last term following a big move from Palermo but his form fizzled out towards the end of the campaign.

For this season Juve have re-signed Fabio Cannavaro from Real Madrid, a move which has angered fans who have not forgiven him for leaving the club following their demotion. (Cannavaro argues it was Juve’s economic decision to sell).

Brazilian playmaker Diego, who has arrived from Werder Bremen, obviously has the skill but supporters worry his style of play will not suit Juve’s traditional 4-4-2 formation and may upset the apple cart.

Juve’s bid for Udinese midfielder Gaetana D’Agostino looks to have failed and media reports say they are now targeting Liverpool’s Xabi Alonso having surprisingly opted to pursue Poulsen last year rather than the technically superior Spaniard.

Can they get it right this time and really challenge Inter Milan for the scudetto?

PHOTO: Juventus midfielder Christian Poulsen (R) fights for the ball with Inter Milan’s Luis Figo during their Italian Serie A match in Turin April 18, 2009. REUTERS/Alessandro Garofalo

Italy’s entire soccer infrastructure needs an overhaul, captain Fabio Cannavaro said after the world champions arrived home from their Confederations Cup nightmare.

Elimination in the group stages after defeats to Egypt and Brazil followed a difficult few weeks for Serie A, with AC Milan’s Kaka sold to Real Madrid and other top players threatening to leave the stuttering league.

“We need reconstruction and not just the national team. Let’s start with the infrastructure, the stadiums, but also the youth teams,” the 35-year-old Juventus defender told reporters.

Pundits have said Italy have too many ageing players and that coach Marcello Lippi is wrong to expect them to repeat their 2006 World Cup success in South Africa next year.

Domestically, Serie A clubs are losing out on revenue because, unlike English sides, they do not own their stadiums.

Milan have also said favourable Spanish tax laws make it difficult to compete in the transfer market with La Liga.

No Italian side reached the Champions League quarter-finals last season and few big name players look likely to head to Serie A for next term.

Promoting young Italians such as Inter Milan’s teenage fullback Davide Santon is the obvious answer but Cannavaro warned that the quality was lacking.

“Enough with this story about the oldies, if I really annoy people then my place is up for grabs but Lippi makes the decisions,” added the defender, who equalled Paolo Maldini’s all-time Italy caps record of 126 against Brazil.

“I don’t see any phenomenons around in Italian football. There are no more Tottis, Baggios or Del Pieros. Today it is enough for a defender to be tall, cute, blonde and a dribbler and they think that makes them a good player.”

AS Roma striker Francesco Totti has retired from international football while fellow World Cup winner Alessandro Del Piero, 34, has been overlooked by Lippi for almost a year.

PHOTOS: Italy’s Fabio Cannavaro (R) challenges Brazil’s Luis Fabiano during their Confederations Cup soccer match at the Loftus Versfeld stadium in Pretoria June 21, 2009. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

As impressive as two Champions League triumphs are, Chelsea’s appointment of former AC Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti will not leave their Premier League title rivals quaking in their boots.

Ancelotti ended his reign at Milan on Sunday after eight years, following top flight stints at Parma and Juventus, all of which amounted to just one Serie A scudetto.

Some may say the Champions League is harder to win than a league, so two is a phenomenal achievement. He also won two domestic cups, two UEFA Super Cups and a World Club Cup, but Chelsea will be expected to challenge for the Premier League next season.

Outgoing temporary boss Guus Hiddink succeeded where his predecessor, Luiz Felipe Scolari could not, in giving a hint of the current Chelsea squad’s potential this season with a third place league finish, a Champions League semi-final and the FA Cup*.

The key to going a few steps further next season will be two or three key signings, including a striker.

In an attempt to put a disappointing fifth-placed finish in Serie A behind him, Ancelotti spent last summer signing the likes of Andriy Shevchenko and Ronaldinho, neither of whom made much of an impact.

John Terry apparently wants Chelsea to sign Franck Ribery and David Silva. Getting players of that quality would certainly make Ancelotti’s job easier. If Chelsea are not prepared to make that type of investment in the playing staff, it’s going to be hard for the new man to make his mark.

PHOTO: AC Milan’s coach Carlo Ancelotti gestures during their Italian serie A soccer match against AS Roma at San Siro stadium in Milan May 24, 2009. REUTERS/Alessandro Garofalo

* Post updated to correct overgenerous reference to Hiddink cup exploits (see comments)

Just three years ago Juve were facing up to the fact they’d be playing in Serie B after being found guilty of match-fixing.

Now, they sit third in Serie A with two games to go but that is not good enough for the Old Lady of Turin. The risk they might miss out on an automatic Champions League spot was too great.

Claudio Ranieri has been sacked despite doing wonders last term when they comfortably finished third.

His team beat Real Madrid home and away this season in the Champions League and they reached the Italian Cup semi-finals.

Juve have been riddled with injuries, Alessandro Del Piero suddenly stopped scoring at the turn of the year yet the run of seven league games without a win is deemed as Ranieri’s fault.

Like when he was dumped by Chelsea, Ranieri has carried himself with great dignity through recent weeks when the media and most of his own fans were calling for his head.

But at Italy’s biggest supported club and the most successful domestically, there is no place to hide.

PHOTO: Juventus coach Claudio Ranieri looks on during thier Italian Serie A soccer match against Lecce at the Olympic stadium in Turin, May 3, 2009. REUTERS/Alessandro Garofalo

A Champions League with unfancied Porto, two Premier League titles with Chelsea — the first in fifty years — and the scudetto with Inter Milan in his first season.

Is there anything Jose Mourinho can’t do?

Roberto Mancini, who led Inter to the last three titles, should take a lot of the credit but Mourinho didnt try to stamp his authority on the team too much. After a bit of an experiment at the start of his reign, he realised Mancini’s tactics were the best with the personnel available.

(See here for a more depth look at Mourinho’s newfound humility)

Yes Serie A is much weaker than in the 1990s but Mourinho’s Inter have still romped home ahead of star-studded AC Milan and the might of a reborn Juventus.

If Zlatan Ibrahimovic decides to leave it will be much, much tricker next term. Then again, Mourinho is probably plotting right now how he can retain the title and make an impression in the Champions League…

Genoa striker Diego Milito and Udinese’s Fabio Quagliarella look good bets.

PHOTO: Inter Milan fans celebrate their team’s 17th league title in Milan’s Piazza Duomo after second-placed AC Milan handed them the scudetto by losing 2-1 at Udinese. REUTERS/Alessandro Garofalo

Nerves are totally understandable at the end of the season with so much at stake.

Even seasoned campaigners get afflicted by the jitter bug, with Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan losing the lead twice in a 2-2 draw at Chievo on Sunday with a fourth straight scudetto almost theirs.

Inter let a 12-point lead slip last term and tumbled over the line on the final day while fans will always remember their incredible collapse in 2002, which included a 2-2 draw with Chievo…

Spanish leaders Barcelona were even worse on Sunday, seeing their title party ruined by Villarreal’s two late goals in a 3-3 draw at the Nou Camp.

Of course, they will both still win their respective championships but a quick glance over to England will show how to avoid nerves.

Manchester United beat city rivals Manchester City 2-0 to move within a whisker of retaining their title and there wasn’t a jitter in sight.

Alex Ferguson has cleverly rotated his squad in the run-in to keep players fresh and hungry, especially with a Champions League final to come.

The underused Carlos Tevez, desperate to show he is worthy of a new deal, scored and put in a masterly performance.

Mourinho had a great record against Ferguson before this season, but he has again been out-thought.

PHOTO: Inter Milan’s coach Jose Mourinho (R) reacts to the linesman during his Italian Serie A soccer match against Chievo at the Bentegodi stadium in Verona May 10, 2009. REUTERS/Max Rossi

Adriano looks to have played his last match for Inter Milan after failing to return to the Serie A leaders from international duty with Brazil this month and announcing he was taking a break from football.

President Massimo Moratti said last week that Inter were considering extinguishing the player’s contract, which runs until the end of next season.

They have grounds to do so as the failure to turn up to work of the 27-year-old, who has suffered alcohol and personal problems, comes after a string of run-ins with coaches and incidents of indiscipline.

In fairness, Inter have tried hard to restore the fine fettle Adriano displayed between 2004 and 2006, when he was one of Serie A’s most feared forwards and helped Brazil win the 2004 Copa America as the competition’s top scorer.

They allowed him to have a loan stint at Sao Paulo in the first half of 2008, when he scored 16 goals, but he was soon out of sorts again when back in Italy even though his old foe Roberto Mancini had been replaced by coach Jose Mourinho.

Indeed, this time the club appear to have few alternatives to offloading the player after he said he is unhappy in Italy and wants to “live in peace here in Brazil”.

If life in Serie A is really what is getting Adriano down, he will probably not be tempted by future offers from Inter’s domestic rivals, something his agent suggested on Friday.

The burly striker’s comments seem to rule out a move elsewhere in Europe too and his fragile reputation would probably scare off the top clubs at the moment anyway.

But with his blend of speed, power and agility he remains potentially formidable and if gets back into the groove in his homeland, he may soon find the Brazilian top flight limited.

A return to form would help foreign managers forget his troubled past, at which point a transfer to the English Premier League, where the off-field pressure is less intense than in Serie A, would not be out of the question.

You never know. Adriano could come back to haunt Inter in the Champions League yet.

PHOTO: Inter Milan’s Brazilian soccer striker Adriano smiles during a news conference in Rio de Janeiro, April 9, 2009. Reuters photo.

After years of racist chanting from the stands, Italian soccer has finally realised it has a problem.

Inter Milan goalscorer Mario Balotelli, born in Palermo and of Ghanaian descent, was racially abused by sections of the Juventus crowd during Saturday’s 1-1 Serie A draw in Turin.

Fans sang “a black Italian does not exist” at the Italy under-21 international.

Maybe it is because the high-profile game was a top-of-the-table clash, maybe it is because Balotelli is Italian, but this time the revulsion felt by fans and the media is much greater than at any time in the past.

Monkey chants towards non-Italian black players are a reasonably regular occurence but clubs normally get just a small fine, like 8,000 euros, from the league. Media coverage is minimal.

This time even some Juve supporters are calling on the authorities to make an example of the Turin club and make them play games behind closed doors at the Stadio Olimpico or force them to move their matches to another stadium.

Making them play at another stadium might not be a huge punishment, though. Despite what Inter and AC Milan think, Juve are Italy’s biggest club and most of their fans are from the rest of the country not Turin. Being forced to play games in the south for example would please many Juve supporters who rarely see their team.

The newspapers expect nothing more than the usual fine but momentum is building with the police involved and Inter president Massimo Moratti saying he would have pulled his team off the pitch if he had been in Turin on Saturday.

Balotelli is a controversial character who likes to wind up opponents and fans but no one deserves the treatment he received.

UPDATE: JUVE MUST PLAY ONE GAME BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

PHOTOS: Inter Milan’s Mario Balotelli (C) celebrates with supporters after scoring against Juventus during their Serie A match in Turin, April 18, 2009. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi

It is now widely accepted that, after a long stint as the world’s most glamorous championship in the 1980s and 90s, Serie A has fallen behind the Premier League and Spain’s Primera Liga.

Problems with hooliganism and the 2006 match-fixing scandal have not helped and attention is now moving to whether the Italian top flight can repel competition from the Bundesliga for third place.

With Italy’s representations all out of this season’s Champions League before the quarter-finals, former Germany coach Rudi Voeller recently told Reuters that he is hopeful the German championship can overtake Serie A in the European rankings and wrestle away its right to a fourth slot in the competition.

Earlier this month, Italy’s top sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport published a survey that suggested the Bundesliga has already beaten Serie A back into fourth, with the French league not too far behind in fifth.

The survey looked at a series of factors aimed at measuring the championships’ pulling power. These included percentages on how full the stadiums are and the number of players with at least one international cap, estimated revenues for this season, the players’ average ages and the value of their salaries and transfers.

Serie A clearly has plenty of issues to address although Gazzetta may have gone a bit far with its conclusions.

The weakness of the survey was that perhaps it did not give enough weight to the enduring appeal derived from Italian sides’ history of success in Europe.

“Italian teams have reached the final of the Champions League 10 times over the last two decades and AC Milan won it just two years ago, so the situation is not that alarming,” Italian football federation vice president and former European Cup winner Demetrio Albertini told Reuters.

Nevertheless, with history continually in the making, Serie A had better watch its back.

PHOTO: Werder Bremen’s Claudio Pizzarro celebrates after scoring against and ultimately eliminating AC Milan in their UEFA Cup match at the San Siro, February 26, 2009. REUTERS/Alessandro Garofalo

Serie A clubs are understandably upset about English sides scooping up youngsters such as Federico Macheda from their academies.

Lazio President Claudio Lotito cried foul after the 17-year-old, a product of the Rome club’s youth system, scored a stunning winner for Manchester United against Aston Villa in his Premier League debut on Sunday.

He has a point. After doing the hard part of nurturing the players’ talents, wealthier foreign sides can step in and enjoy the benefits. It’s not the best way to encourage clubs to invest in their academies and FIFA and UEFA are looking at tightening the rules on the transfer of under-18s.

But Lotito’s annoyance is only justified to a certain degree as, if Macheda had stayed at Lazio, it seems unlikely that he would have got the chance United boss Alex Ferguson gave him to hit the headlines at such a tender age.

“I doubt an Italian team would have made the move Ferguson did,” respected Italian sports writer Italo Cucci told Rai television.

Indeed, while Serie A clubs are good at producing young players, they are frequently criticised in Italy for not giving them the chance to shine.

Italy striker Giuseppe Rossi, another player snapped up as a teen by United, was unable to find a Serie A side even after an impressive loan stint at Parma in 2007 and his skills are now on show in Spain at Villarreal.

It’s also worth remembering that Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry both joined Arsenal in the 1990s after failing to find space early in their careers at AC Milan and Juventus respectively.

The highly charged atmosphere of Serie A pressures coaches into preferring tried-and-tested options rather than risking players who inevitably make mistakes out of inexperience.

“The English definitely have more courage in giving youngsters a chance abroad,” former Juve and Chelsea striker Gianluca Vialli told Sky. “The difference there is that when they have an off match, they still let them play the next game.”

That said, Ferguson seemed to have acquired some of his Italian colleagues’ caution on Tuesday, with Macheda warming the bench in a disappointing 2-2 home draw with Porto in their Champions League quarter-final first leg.

PHOTO: Manchester United’s Federico Macheda heads the ball during a training session at the club’s Carrington training complex in Manchester, northern England, April 6 2009. REUTERS/Phil Noble