Football Season Guide

Having finished the past Serie B campaign at the top of the table, despite a poor beginning which saw coach David Suazo almost immediately replaced by Eugenio Corini, at last Brescia made it back to the top tier of Italian football, 8 years after their last participation. Corini, who returns to Serie A after disastrous experiences at Chievo Verona and Palermo, should go on adopting the 4-3-1-2 formation that worked so well in Serie B. Brescia have not been particularly active in the transfer campaign and they might be waiting for the end of August in order to sign a few new players. In fact, in terms of departures, they lost just 1 regular, Romagnoli, whose loan ended and had to return to his parent club, while they got rid of a few fringe players, who did not have enough experience for the new adventure ahead of them. In order to replace the Empoli centre-back, they signed in Magnani, who had his first taste of Serie A in the past campaign, at Sassuolo, and the Colombian giant Chancellor, who had a short experience in the Russian Premier League. Considering that skipper Gastaldello is 36 and Cistana has never played at this level, they are still on the hunt for a centre-back. For the goal, they signed Joronen from FK Copenhagen and he might be preferred to Alfonso. They are both unknown quantities in Serie A. Zmrhal arrived from Sparta Praha to provide some depth in a midfield which is the best department of the team, with such promising players like Bisoli and, above all, wunderkind Tonali. In the attack, Donnarumma and Torregrossa, who scored 37 goals last season overall, will be joined by newly-arrived Aye. They are all debutants at this level, though.