Lazio’s impressive win over the Rossoneri has them closing in on the struggling pair with a handful of games remainingWas Fabio Paratici still in denial on Monday night? Before Juventus kicked off away to Fiorentina on Sunday, their chief football officer insisted nobody at the club was even considering the possibility that they might finish outside the top four. By the time this latest round of Serie A games had finished, his team was locked in a three-way tie for third.One of the teams alongside them was Milan. Between the two, it is hard to know which might feel more dread at the prospect of missing out on the Champions League. As winners of the past nine Serie A titles,...
That Atalanta should pick this weekend to record their first win over Juventus in two decades felt powerfully poignantHours before 12 of Europe’s leading football clubs announced plans for a breakaway Super League that would shield them from the consequences of sporting failure, one was busy demonstrating why such protection might be desired. Juventus, winners of the last nine Serie A titles, fell to fourth in the table as they lost 1-0 at Atalanta, dropping behind their opponents in the process.The Bianconeri could have slipped all the way out of the Champions League places if Napoli had beaten Inter later that evening. In the event, those clubs drew, but Juventus’s margin for error has evaporated. The gap to Napoli is...
Speculation that Gómez could be off has been escalating, before he came on to help seal a 1-1 draw at JuventusAs Atalanta lined up to face Juventus on Wednesday, their captain went to pick out a spot on the bench. Papu Gómez had been left out of the starting XI for the second game running – a third consecutive league fixture, in fact, if you consider the match against Udinese for which he was not even called up, but which ended up being postponed.Fans might have expected him to see in a sour mood, but the cameras at the Allianz Stadium found him smiling. Gómez was singing along to the Juventus club anthem, as it played over the stadium PA....
Will the rookie manager steer Juventus to a 1oth straight title or could Inter, or Lazio or Atalanta, finally topple them?Millions of Italian children went back to school on Monday. So did the manager of Juventus. Andrea Pirlo was completing the final stage of his Uefa Pro licence course, defending a thesis he had submitted two weeks earlier under the title “My Football”.His writings will soon be made available, joining those of every other coach who has passed through Italy’s famous Scuola Allenatori (Managers’ School), in the library of the technical centre in Coverciano. Most of us, though, will get our first real insight into Pirlo’s vision for how the game should be played when Juventus host Sampdoria in their...
Inter keep playing good football but are unable to stop throwing away matches from winning positionsSix goals, a red card, two penalties and an early contender for miss of the century. Not bad for the warm-up act. Wednesday’s main event in Serie A was Atalanta-Lazio, a meeting of two teams that have produced some of the finest footballing symphonies on the peninsula. But first on stage, in the ‘early’ 7.30pm slot, were the chaotic chords of Inter-Sassuolo.It was the sort of tune that Antonio Conte never wanted to hear at San Siro. After becoming the Inter manager last summer, one of his first acts was to stop the club’s anthem, Amala, from being played before home games. The song is...