Summary: With summer transfer market now closed and international football front and center stage as World Cup Qualification from Brazil next summer continues to shape much of the talking points, we are joined by Italian football correspondent and commentator Gabriele Marcotti who gives us his view of what happened in the Premier League, Serie A and what awaits the Azzurri as they head for yet one more attempt to place a fifth star on the shirt. We begin in the Premier League where the big splash signing eluded the top clubs in England and at Manchester United in particular and we look to assess that situation for trends and synergies with other moves that failed to materialize all summer. Then we turn our attention almost exclusively to Serie A and Italy where several clubs made a number of extraordinary deals to narrow the gap with two-time defending champion Juventus FC who are now in a massive chase to reach the promised land in European competition. That leaves some emerging faces to consider, of course, and chief among them will be a number of emerging clubs in Fioretina, Napoli and Roma who all have done remarkable business and have transformed their team sheets with great new signings who have already left early impact just two weeks into the 2013-14 season. We also spend particular emphasis on perhaps the most perplexing team during this mercato in AC Milan where the sum of extinguished plans, confusing agendas and plain last minute desperation have left the Rossoneri on the near outside looking in with a number of strange moves that were in some way designed to be tangled up with a nostalgic reach for club icon Kaka on deadline day from Real Madrid. We explore the situation in detail with Milan, why this mercato was such a grand failure and whether the club has made an even bigger mistake in isolating both Keisuke Honda and Stephan El Shaarawy who both tonight seem further away from long term association with AC Milan than they did before the window closed. We also pay our extreme attention to the matter of Juventus and Italy legend Gigi Buffon who hits an important milestone against the Czech Republic and continues to rewrite history and a concept of excellence not just at his position but also what is excellence in football overall.
