SERIE A INTER MILAN v JUVENTUS: Paddy Agnewlooks ahead to the top-of-the-table clash that could shape the rest of the Italian season, and at the sideshow the managers provide

WHEN INTER Milan coach José Mourinho arrived in Florence last Monday for the annual "Panchina D'Oro" (literally Golden Bench) awards, all eyes were on him. Waiting for him inside the Football Federation centre of Coverciano were all his Serie A colleagues including the man who preceded him as Chelsea manager, namely current Juventus coach Claudio Ranieri.

Given the sparks that flew in a public exchange between the two men last summer, the media were on standby for a dust-up. They were to be partially disappointed because the "Special One" reserved his criticisms not for Ranieri but rather for the entire Serie A championship, making the typically astute if not exactly popular observation that, while it might be technically very sophisticated, Italian football simply does not have the popularity or following abroad of either the Premiership or the Spanish Liga.

As for any talking he might have wanted to do with Ranieri, Mourinho no doubt hopes his Inter team will do that for him tonight when they line out at the San Siro to face Juventus in a top-of-the-table clash. It is, of course, early days yet but this could be a game that will shape the rest of the Italian season.

The Serie A table has a wholly familiar look about it this morning, with Inter out in front just one point clear of city rivals AC Milan and three points clear of Juventus. The early-season madness when pretenders such as Lazio, Napoli and Udinese were top of the table did not last long. Normal service has been resumed, with the Big Three of Italian soccer once again seeming set to dominate the rest of the season, and for the umpteenth time.

Media expectations that sparks might fly last Monday go back to August. Commenting on his side's disappointing 3-0 defeat by Hamburg in a pre-season friendly, Ranieri had appeared to stir things up by saying: "I'm not like Mourinho who needs to win all the time to feel that he is doing the right thing."

No sooner said than a reply was winging its way from Appiano Gentile to Turin. Speaking on InterChannel, the club's in-house TV channel, Mourinho's reply was typically acidic: "Ranieri is right. I demand a lot of myself and I need to win to be happy . . . Maybe that is why I've won a lot in my career. Ranieri says that his mentality is such that he doesn't need to win to be sure that he is doing the job right.

"Maybe that's why at nearly 70 years of age (Ranieri is in fact 56-years-old), he has only won a couple of cups. Maybe he should change his mentality but then again, perhaps he is too old for that."

In case you have forgotten, Ranieri was the man Russian millionaire Roman Abramovich dumped at the end of his first season as Chelsea owner, replacing him with Mourinho. Then, as we all know, where Ranieri had won friends but not league titles, Mourinho went on to win league titles but not necessarily friends.

As he prepares for tonight's game, Ranieri too seems to be in a conciliatory mood. Asked this week if the "tension" between himself and Mourinho was linked to the fact he had been moved out of Chelsea to make way for the Special One, Ranieri told sports daily Gazzetta Dello Sport: "No, I knew that I had only a little time there and when you leave a job, it doesn't matter to you who comes after you . . . I did well in my first season with Chelsea when, without spending anything, I took them to a fourth-place finish and that at a time when they always finished mid-table and before Abramovich bought them."

Under Mourinho, says Ranieri, Inter are destined to "grow and grow and grow". The extent to which just about all the Inter players speak well of their new boss, says the Juventus coach, is very revealing.

These days, too, Ranieri's own players tend to speak well of him. Following a rocky early October when Juventus lost in successive weeks away to Palermo and Napoli, the Old Lady has refound her best form, winning five in a row in Serie A as well as trouncing Real Madrid both home and away in the Champions League to dominate qualifying Group H.

Significantly, it has been the old dog for the hard road, Alessandro Del Piero, who has led the comeback, scoring spectacular goals in both legs against Real as well as against Roma and Chievo.

Inter, while dominating Serie A, have been less impressive in the Champions League where their last outing saw them scramble to an embarrassing 3-3 away draw with Cypriot side Anothosis.

Even that Serie A dominance, however, has seemed to owe more to the talent and current outstanding form of Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic than to the much-desired Mourinho effect.

In truth, Inter are still a "work in progress" in which injuries to such as Colombian Ivan Cordoba (suspended tonight), Argentine Walter Samuel, Portugal's Luis Figo, Argentine Esteban Cambiasso and Marco Materazzi have slowed up the Mourinho impact.

In the meantime, though, the Special One reminded us all of his winning work methods when he dropped Brazilian Adriano, a player with whom he had worked long and hard to get him back to his best form, after the striker turned up late one Monday for training, clearly much the worse for a hard night out on the town.

Ranieri v Mourinho or Del Piero v Ibrahimovic, whatever way you look at it, this could be an intriguing game and one in which Claudio Ranieri and Juventus might just put one over on their great rivals.