Inter have to slip up at some stage and it may happen on Betfair's Live Video offering

European Leagues / Dan Fitch / 30 November 2007 / Leave a Comment

Dan "The Betting Man" Fitch on Inter's tricky trip to beautiful Florence

The annoying thing about everyone thinking that you're the best of the best, in your chosen profession, is that you have to keep proving that they're right. Worse still, when you're the best, everyone hopes that you'll get knocked back down to size (i.e. most of the western world praying that Ricky Hatton can knock seven shades of something out of Floyd Mayweather).

In the world of Italian football, Inter are the team to beat. It remains to be seen whether anyone can mount a serious challenge to their title, but for a team that are talked about as being head and shoulders above their Serie A competitors, there isn't much daylight between Inter Milan and the chasing pack.

Not that Inter could realistically have expected a much better start this season. Eight wins and four draws have seen Inter rise to the top of Serie A, with an unbeaten record, whilst in the Champions League they have already qualified for the last sixteen. However, if there's one thing that Italian teams are good at, it's not losing and the pretenders to Inter's throne have made strong starts.

Juventus, Roma and Udinese are all just three points off Inter, with Fiorentina slightly behind at four points off the lead. On Sunday, Inter travel to Fiorentina's Stadio Artemio Franchi and you can keep up with all the action with Betfair's Live Video coverage. A win for Fiorentina would see them really close the gap on Inter, though they could have been in a position to go top, if not for last weekend's result at Reggina.

La Viola could not break the deadlock, allowing the struggling Reggina to climb out of the relegation spots, as they forced a goalless draw. Fiorentina were in action again on Thursday night in a UEFA Cup group game, drawing 1-1 at AEK Athens, which should see them through to the only slightly less boring, knockout stages.

Fiorentina should of course have been playing Champions League football for the past two seasons. The reason that they have had to make do with the dourness of the Ken Barlow-like UEFA, rather than the flashy Mike Baldwin-esque Champions League, once again brings us back to the match fixing scandal.

Fiorentina had actually finished fourth in 2005-2006, but their dodgy dealing saw the Italian authorities decide they should be relegated. A successful appeal saw them stay in Serie A, but with nineteen points deducted. Having lost their Champions League place, they went into 2006-2007 with a fifteen point deduction and did very well to gain a UEFA Cup spot with a sixth place finish.

Without the points penalty, Cesare Prandelli's men would have finished in third place, with just goal difference separating them from runners-up Roma. Had Fiorentina kept their noses clean, two successive Champions League campaigns would have improved both their standing and finances. Who knows what impact this would have had on their current squad, but it would have almost certainly allowed them to retain the services of Bayern's Luca Toni, who is now scoring more often than an England player at Shaun Wright Phillips' birthday party.

The scandal has therefore rather masked the progress made my Fiorentina and this makes them over priced at [32] to win Serie A. Not that I actually think they'll go anywhere near winning the thing, but with a Roma team that Fiorentina matched last season available at [6.4], there is potential for trading.

Fiorentina are a healthy [3.75] to win Sunday's game, with Inter at [2.34] and the draw [3.2]. It's tempting to think that Inter have to slip up eventually, but they have such strength in depth compared with the rest of the division. Last week's 2-1 win over Atalanta, saw goals from Cruz and Suazo, who are in effect, Inter's reserve front men.

This is the sort of test that will determine whether Inter will be romp home again, or if there can be a true title race. All this and Ronaldo's wacky new hairstyle. Who said Serie A was getting boring?