First things first: this is not the way most of us hoped to be celebrating the week after Samir Handanovic finally lifted the Serie A trophy.

Indeed, watching this club’s first major success in over a decade immediately turn into an orgy of hand-wringing and lamentation within a few short days felt immensely exhausting. It couldn’t help but bring to mind the similarly brief period we were allowed to enjoy winning the treble before Jose Mourinho announced his departure, the first fallen domino in what would turn out to be a catastrophic series of misfortunes over Inter’s long, painful past decade. My God, it’s happening again. Can’t we ever have nice things at this club?

While anger and frustration are understandable, I can’t help but wonder if our collective trauma over the club’s recent exile into trophy-less purgatory hasn’t made us overly inclined to despair. Yes, trading Antonio Conte for Simone Inzaghi has to count as a downgrade. And yes, it’s nerve-wracking to read so many reports – many of them clearly overstated, though most based in truth – about the sales and cutbacks that the club will need to make over the summer. Many Inter fans, on this site and elsewhere, have been talking about going "back to the drawing board" or even having "another Year Zero" instead of building on the past season’s success. I'm usually as pessimistic as anyone, but this seems premature to me, because we honestly have no idea how Inter’s owners will end up dealing with this crunch. Sure, it’s possible they just butcher the squad and turn Inter into an overnight joke. But I have a hard time imagining a savvy operator like Marotta isn’t trying to find a creative solution that perhaps sacrifices one huge name, flips some of the more marginal players, and leaves the basic spine of the team intact. I'm willing to wait and see.

But perhaps the most common lament I see is the idea that Inter has just ruined its chance to once again create a dynasty. That word comes up over and over again: "dynasty." Conte was supposed to create a dynasty with Inter, and now it’s over the minute it began. When we think about Inter’s future, we tend see two possibilities: either we start a dynasty, a multi-year cycle of imperious dominance, or else we fall back into yet another Banter Era, embarrassing ourselves and fading into obscurity and mediocrity. I’ve been seeing this from Inter fans all over, but it’s not just us. Adam Digby, who literally wrote the book on Juventus, tweeted this when Conte’s departure was announced: "After a decade of unbridled success, this season made me wonder how long it would take Juventus to close the gap on an unstoppable Inter. Today, the Nerazzurri have done it for them."

Of course, it makes sense that we think about success this way, that we can only imagine feast or famine when we ponder Inter’s future. If you look at the last decade and a half of Serie A, starting from the Calciopoli era, it’s been utterly dominated by two very long dynasties. This period began with an Inter dynasty, which ended with a one-off Milan title, and then Juve’s long dynasty kicked off immediately after. In 16 years, the ownership of the Serie A badge has only changed hands three times: Inter to Milan, Milan to Juve, Juve back to Inter. So it’s easy to take it for granted that this is just how Serie A works, and to see Inter’s apparent inability to kick off a new dynasty as a cataclysmic failure that will soon spiral out of control. I mean, this is what the last 16 years of the league has looked like:

Scudetto winners 2005-2021

Juve: 9

Inter: 5

Milan: 1

But now, just to put that into perspective, let’s look at a period of identical length right before that:

Scudetto winners 1988-2004

Milan: 6

Juve: 5

Inter: 1

Napoli: 1

Sampdoria: 1

Roma: 1

Lazio: 1

Looks quite different, doesn’t it? And not only were there seven different champions in that 16-year period, but the longest consecutive title-winning streak was three (Milan, '91-'94). Other than that, the title bounced from club to club frequently, with Milan and Juve consistently competing for the upper hand, while plenty of other strong competitors were ready and able to pounce any time they slipped up. And this period is more or less what the modern history of Serie A looks like before that, too. Prior to Milan’s three-peat in the early '90s, you have to go all the way back to the Grande Torino squad of the 1940s to find any club who won more than two consecutive Scudetti.

In other words, the era of Serie A that most of us grew up watching has actually been far more lopsided and dynastic than at any point in its previous half-century. It’s simply not normal for one club to win four Scudetti in a row, let alone nine. There are a number of reasons why this has been the case in recent years, and there are also reasons to suspect this might not be the case going forward.

For one, there’s the simple fact that the gap between the top clubs and everyone else grew substantially wider over the last two decades, with ever more of the marquee talent concentrated among a tiny few clubs. While it’s still true that stark economic inequality exists between the top clubs and the rest of the league, the financial chaos caused by the pandemic has evened that playing field somewhat – at the very least, there are very few clubs who can still afford to buy whomever they want and not worry about the consequences, and we’re not the only ones who are feeling sudden pressure to sell off some of our highest earners.

And there’s also the fact that both the recent Inter and Juve dynasties coincided with fairly unusual circumstances for their biggest opponents. Inter’s dynasty began with the relegation of Juve, who were more or less out of contention for the entire time Inter was on top. Juve’s dynasty took place at a time when both Inter and Milan were in the middle of historic slumps, with financial sanctions and ownership chaos leaving them both struggling to even finish top four.

So with that last point in mind, let’s seriously think about this. If we want to think about whether Inter can compete for a Scudetto next year, who are our biggest competitors? Where are they in relation to us? Is there anyone who looks ready to capitalize on Inter’s hardships and start a new dynasty of their own?

Milan are the Serie A club that seems to be on the steepest upward trajectory, and safe money would say they ought to win a title within the next two or three years. But can they really go the distance with Pioli in charge? Without their star goalkeeper? With a leading goalscorer who will soon be 40 years old and has been defying gravity, Wile E. Coyote-style, for a long time already? And all while they are – let’s not forget this, considering Inter’s circumstances – still controlled by the hedge fund that took possession of the team when their Chinese owners couldn’t make their debt payments? Maybe so. They’re building a very good team. But I would be very hesitant to call them the favorites right away.

And then there’s Juve. I would never want to count Juve out, especially as they’re about to welcome back a far better coach than the oft-hapless Pirlo. But that club has some real issues to sort out too. For one, their best player is also their greatest liability: Ronaldo is a Top 10 All-Timer, no question, but he’s also 36 years old, and earns so much money that it’s equally hard for Juve to find a buyer for him as it is for them to rebuild their squad while he’s still drawing a paycheck. And the rest of that squad needs serious work. Two longtime pillars of their defense are in the twilight of their careers. Their midfield is mid-table quality at best. Their No. 9 and No. 10 scored 15 goals last season…combined...and Chiesa is the only up-and-comer they've signed over the past few years who hasn't belly-flopped. They have the highest payroll in the league by a huge margin, and they barely lucked into 4th place on the final matchday of the season. Scudetto-winners next year? If it were any team other than Juve, I would say most people would be a lot more skeptical.

Where does that leave everyone else? If I were Atalanta, I would look at this field of "big" clubs and say "it’s now or never," and really try to make this their Sampdoria ‘91 year. Napoli are a giant question mark, as they’ve recently done far worse than their squad’s talent level would seem to suggest – do they fall off the map or get their stuff together? Could a new coach take Inzaghi’s almost-there Lazio squad and give them a spark to get to the next level? Can Mourinho make miracles happen with Roma?

All I’m saying is this: provided that the summer doesn’t see a truly catastrophic dismantling of the team, Inter should absolutely be able to compete for a title next season. Am I confident Inter will win it? Not really, no. Do I think there’s any chance that Inter could finish 12 points on top again? Almost impossible. But it's looking like it's gonna be a real street fight, and in a street fight I like our chances as much as anyone's. Because there is no 1000-lb gorilla in the league to contend with, no longer any dynasties to overthrow, and no obvious dynasties on the horizon. Maybe Serie A is about to start looking more like the Premier League and less like the Bundesliga, with a handful of clubs ready to legitimately compete for the title every year. As long as Inter remains among that handful of clubs, that might even be a good thing.