A round-up of the Italian teams’ results after the first matchday of the Champions League

Let us line up our four managers, skewered on the Champions League spit. Fàbregas is a genius and a scholar – that much is now beyond doubt. He makes Como play like a concentration of moving particles that influence one another. Como put into practice what is known in scientific jargon as ‘entanglement’ – a phenomenon of quantum mechanics whereby two or more particles become bound to one another even at a distance, such that the state of one simultaneously determines the state of the other. In practice, a player’s movement, with or without the ball, is met with a corresponding adjustment by the rest of the team. The result is both chaos and harmony, a style of play that is consistently surprising and effective, constantly disorienting opponents. Against Leipzig, it appeared to be a contest between the well-prepared and the underdogs: the former arrived organised and polished, travelling by coach, while the latter seemed disorganised, with faded shirts, arriving at the Sinigaglia in old, rattling cars. Only Martin Demichelis, the German side’s manager, seemed well-defined, so smartly cut, with his hair gelled stiffly upwards – though perhaps for that very reason a little dim, football-wise, overwhelmed by the Larian superiority (I’ve been wanting to use that word for quite some time). Como, making their Champions League debut, have once again shown us where football is heading, if we want to start winning trophies again.

Chivu’s Inter side employed their familiar tactics. The team play well, but they are too predictable and occasionally lose their focus. In Madrid, they gifted the opposition two goals and then squandered chances in attack. Inter’s manager must address certain mistakes to ensure that all the talent he has at his disposal in Italy is not wasted in Europe. Gasperini has once again shown himself to be a courageous manager. In Turkey, they dominated the first half but then made individual errors that could have led to defeat. What remains from Roma’s match is the constant impression of a team that wants to dictate the play, with pace and speed. Compared to Como, they seem – and I emphasise ‘seem’ – to expend more energy physically, a limitation that Gasperini needs to work on regardless of the options he has on the bench.

Finally, Allegri, the most criticised of the four. Always a bit out of breath, preoccupied with defence but lacking creativity in attack. Playing like this, Napoli become a reverse ‘cortomuso’. They lose by the narrowest of margins because they are daunted by their own abundance. Allegri, obsessed with balance, should let himself go a little more, with the recklessness of his younger colleagues. Because when you’re always teetering on the edge, all it takes is one false step on the tightrope to fall.