The Bianconeri slumped to defeat by Benevento but senior figures at the club cannot lay all the blame on the managerPippo Inzaghi put his arm around Andrea Pirlo’s shoulder before kick-off at the Allianz Stadium. It was an instinctive moment of reconnection between two men, who played together for a decade at Milan. They were brought to San Siro by the same agent, Tullio Tinti, in the summer of 2001 and shared more than 200 matches side by side.As players, they achieved some of football’s highest highs. On the footage of Milan’s 2007 Champions League final win over Liverpool, you can see them in an identical pose, Inzaghi pulling his friend close as they head for the changing rooms at...
After collecting a point from their opening 18 matches, have Benevento turned their luck around courtesy of the resurgence of a journeyman striker?Sampdoria were seeing witches on Saturday. So was everyone else in Italy, to be fair. This was the weekend when La Befana made her annual visit, dropping off gifts for good children and lumps of coal for the naughty. Whether this kindly old lady, riding a broomstick that she uses to sweep each house before she leaves, should technically be considered a witch is the subject of scholarly debate but she is widely depicted as one. It is not La Befana, though, who appears on Benevento’s crest. Their witch is a manifestation of the city’s pagan traditions, dating...
The Partenopei lead Juve by a point in Italy, where 10 of the last 11 Serie A winners were ‘winter champions’, but memories of that exception remainIt was fitting that Marek Hamsik should grab the winner on Friday night: a record-breaking player adding a final exclamation mark to his team’s record-breaking year. He had overtaken Diego Maradona as Napoli’s all-time leading scorer in Serie A with a strike against Sampdoria just before Christmas. Now he had sunk Crotone with a cool left-foot finish at the Stadio Ezio Scida.This was one of those nights when Napoli should have had a hatful, raining in 23 shots on Alex Cordaz’s goal. As it was, one would suffice to secure their 18th away win...
Alberto Bignoli joined an exclusive club of scoring Serie A keepers, while Perisic’s hat-trick took Inter above Napoli, and Lazio showed character to beat SampdoriaWith Napoli hosting Juventus on Friday night, we split the regular Serie A blog in two this week. The main piece, covering that game, is here. But the rest of the weekend turned out to be rather lively as well … Related: Benevento win first Serie A point after keeper's injury-time header stuns Milan ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE, WHEN YOU THINK YOU'VE SEEN IT ALL... INJURY TIME, GOALKEEPER DIVING HEADER EQUALISER Sensational drama at Benevento pic.twitter.com/3q7qVYbvYU Related: This was supposed to be Milan's revival season. Instead they have regressed | Paolo Bandini Continue reading...
A penalty awarded against Juventus at home in the opening game was just what the VAR was supposed to pick up – but a referee whistling too soon at Bologna proved costly for TorinoIt used to be that a new Serie A season would provide us with a fresh round of discorsi da bar – football talking points to get worked up about over a beer or Monday morning espresso. This year, things went in a different direction. When the final whistles had blown and Giorgia Cardinaletti welcomed us back to Rai 2’s long-running highlights show, Domenica Sportiva, she and her studio guests instead dived straight into discorsi da VAR.Yes, this was the weekend when Italian football fans received their...