🇮🇹 OneFootball's Serie A Season Awards 2022/23 | OneFootball

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Padraig Whelan·6 June 2023

🇮🇹 OneFootball's Serie A Season Awards 2022/23

Article image:🇮🇹 OneFootball's Serie A Season Awards 2022/23

The drama continued in Italy as the for the fourth straight year, a new Serie A champion was crowned.

It is now time to hand out our annual awards from the campaign that was.


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Player of the Season 👏

There are a few contenders for this honour who are tough to separate but we’re giving the nod to Napoli striker Victor Osimhen.

This was the year he put it all together at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, netting more in this single campaign (26) than in his previous two seasons there combined.

That tally also saw him become the highest scoring African for a single Serie A season and the fourth Partenopei player to net at least 20 in the Aurelio De Laurentiis era.

The Napoli president has insisted he has no intention of selling and after this season, it would take an astronomical fee to even get him to the bargaining table.


Young Player of the Season 👶

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Atalanta’s conveyor belt has done it again.

In teenager Giorgio Scalvini, La Dea have produced perhaps the most exciting and talented centre-back prospect in Italian football.

An assured presence at the back despite his lack of experience, so rapid has his rise been that he has already won four caps for his country too.

Scalvini just gets the nod ahead of team-mate Rasmus Højlund, a young Scandinavian striking sensation who is drawing Erling Haaland comparisons, the only player under the age of 20 to be directly involved in at least 10 Serie A goals for the season.


Surprise of the Season 🤯

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At risk of making this the Napoli Awards Show but nobody saw this title win coming.

After a summer in which Kalidou Koulibaly, Fabian Ruíz and attacking trio Lorenzo Insigne, Dries Mertens and Arkadiusz Milik all moved on, expectations were low for what Luciano Spalletti’s side could achieve – even a top four finish seemed optimistic at the time.

Not only did they shock everyone by winning the title, the manner in which they did so was all the more surprising.

They won it at a canter, their gap to second place never falling below 12 points at any point in the second half of the season, while wrapping it up with five games to spare means they also share the record for the earliest Scudetto win ever.


Coach of the Season 👔

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Spalletti’s heroics will ensure he will go down in history as a Napoli legend forever so he perhaps doesn’t need any extra love here and it would be fair to shine the spotlight elsewhere.

Ivan Jurić led a relatively unheralded Torino team to a 10th place finish, Vincenzo Italiano continued to improve Fiorentina with a refreshing brand of football (and led them to two cup finals too) and Thiago Motta proved why he is so highly regarded.

But ultimately, Spalletti’s achievement was the best in the division. The fact that he is taking a self-enforced leave of absence for a year shows just how much he put into ending the Partenopei’s long wait for glory.


Signing of the Season 🤑

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Kvaradona. Kvaravaggio. Whatever moniker you go with for Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, he has earned that high praise.

Comparisons, light-heartedly or not, with the God-like figure that Maradona is in Naples do not come lightly but the Georgian superstar has earned them.

He was signed from Dinamo Batumi for €12m – a fee which will go down as one of Serie A’s best bits of business ever following a campaign in which he hit double figures for goals and assists to help end Napoli’s long Scudetto wait.


Managerial Change of the Season 🔄

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After six games, Serie A debutants Monza were bottom of the table with just a single point to show for their efforts when Adriano Galliani decided to sack Giovanni Stroppa and replace him with Primavera boss Raffaelle Palladino.

Palladino did the double over Juventus, beat Inter at San Siro, became one of the few coaches to defeat Napoli and guided them to safety with six game so spare.

No newly-promoted side had ever achieved that feat before in their first top flight season. The gamble paid off as they cruised to an 11th place finish.


Biggest Improvement of the Season 📈

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From the start of the campaign until mid-February, it seemed that Inter’s gamble to bring Romelu Lukaku back to the club had backfired spectacularly.

With the club’s ultras making their disappointment well known with both his return and his performances, their frustrations were justified as he contributed just one goal and one assist in Serie A.

So it is a testament to his quality and mentality that he finished the campaign with 10 goals and five assists even when he wasn’t guaranteed a starting berth.


Feelgood Story of the Season ❤️

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Outside of that Napoli title win?

Monza defender Pablo Marí was the victim of a stabbing while shopping with his family in Milan last October and hospitalised for several weeks.

But he made a swift recovery, returning to the fray in January after the extremely scary situation  – providing one of the campaign’s most memorable moments on his return and played his part as the Brianzoli achieved survival.


Goal of the Season 😍

Hellas Verona paid a big price for turning their back on Cristiano Biraghi as he lined up a free-kick – even if he was inside his own half! The audacity and execution are glorious and it was the longest range goal in Serie A for over a decade.


Game of the Season 🏟

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Atalanta’s 8-2 victory over Salernitana was the standout result of the season.

It was the first time since Inter in 1996 that a Serie A side netted eight in a single game and was the first fixture in six years to hit double figures for goals.

Incredibly, since Gian Piero Gasperini’s arrival in the Orobici dugout, his team have scored seven or more goals in four different league games – three times more than any other side.

Other eye-catching and exciting affairs were Napoli’s 5-1 thrashing of Juventus, Milan’s dramatic 3-2 derby win over Inter and Sassuolo’s stunning 5-2 humiliation of Milan at San Siro.