Welcome to Calcio Square, an email newsletter dedicated to Serie A and Italian football. Every Monday, I uncover one key topic from the weekend of action.

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Lautaro Martinez used to score big goals for Inter. He won them the Supercopppa Italiana in January 2024 with a 91st-minute clincher against Napoli. His goal in a 2-1 win over Verona helped crown Inter winter champions that season. He regularly tormented AC Milan, Juventus, and Atalanta, and collected numerous braces in-between those contests.

But something happened at the beginning of last year. Martinez scored just once in his final 12 Serie A appearances last season, playing a relatively small role as Inter sealed the title. Though he burst back into form during the Copa America, the 27-year-old hasn't performed as meaningfully in the league, generating bits and pieces of offense — often of the scattergun variety — in games against top-eight opposition.

If we discounted goals scored against the bottom 12 teams, he'd have one Serie A tally to his name this season.

Martinez against Serie A's top 8

What's going on here? How has one of Serie A's most credible finishers lost his edge? He's avoided significant injury most of his career and has played in the same system for years. Nothing has really changed in that regard. But his production has dropped off significantly.

The easiest explanation is that he plays a lot. He's paid the modern game's ultimate toll. The Argentine has already played 40 games since the middle of August, and those efforts follow a season in which he made 60 appearances for club and country. Martinez has played in 227 games in the last three-and-a-half seasons alone. That's a lot of football for a player who doesn't just operate as a traditional No. 9 but as someone who loves to track back, link up, and cover large swaths of the pitch. Fatigue is understandable.

Then consider that Inter haven't had a true substitute for Martinez, and that head coach Simone Inzaghi doesn't seem to trust his deputies. Mehdi Taremi, Joaquin Correa, and Marko Arnautovic are so far below Martinez's standards that none of the three could possibly provide long-term relief. That's a failure of Inter's transfer policy, and it's affected Martinez negatively.

Strike partner Marcus Thuram has had his own struggles, scoring just once in his last 13 appearances across all competitions. Getting a lead isn't easy for Inter, and they struggle to defend them as well as they did in the past.

It's largely thanks to Inter's incredible group of midfielders and wide players that they're still in contention for the Serie A title. Inter have 17 different goal-scorers this season, and Denzel Dumfries has become one of their most reliable complimentary scorers.

But Inter are losing some of the biggest games, and a big reason is that Martinez and Thuram aren't producing. Martinez couldn't generate anything meaningful during Sunday's 1-0 loss to Juventus, firing all four of his shots high and wide. He should've come off, and a change probably would've happened if there was someone who could replace him.