This was another opportunity to marvel at the Serbian’s outlandish talents and wonder how, at 27, he was still hereMaurizio Sarri was not trying to send a message. His decision to leave Luis Alberto out of Lazio’s starting XI to face Inter on Friday was simply a choice to trust Matías Vecino to run the left side of his midfield. The Uruguayan arrived in Rome this summer, but he and Sarri go a long way back having worked together at Empoli in 2014-15.Plenty has changed since then, but Vecino’s strengths remain the same: robust physicality, positional discipline and a willingness to play vertically: using straightforward directness to help his team break the lines. His gifts are less eye-catching than Alberto’s...
Some big names are gone but the goals of Georgian winger Khvicha Kvaratskhelia have helped Napoli top the early tableThey have stopped worrying about how to pronounce Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s name in Naples. When the player’s transfer to Napoli was announced in April, one anxious reporter asked Aurelio De Laurentiis for guidance. “I’ll make something up,” replied the club president. “We’ll call him something. He can be ‘Zizì’, that’s not bad.”A more obvious abbreviation was adopted elsewhere, ‘Kvara’ becoming accepted shorthand among journalists and fans. Two Serie A appearances later, however, a new nickname has taken hold. From the alleys of Naples’s Spanish Quarter to the headlines of national newspapers, the Georgian was being hailed on Monday morning as ‘Kvaradona’. Continue...
After his side somehow lost to Werder Bremen from 2-0 up in the 89th minute, the returning BVB coach has work to do“Even as a child, you can’t imagine a sequence of play that spectacular,” said Ole Werner. The 34-year-old Werder Bremen manager is the Bundesliga’s youngest head coach but anyone would have celebrated as wildly on the pitch after this tumultuous ending at Signal Iduna Park, which left Borussia Dortmund stunned.“I have no idea what happened there,” said their shocked captain, Marco Reus, who has seen a lot of improbable twists in his decade at the club. Continue reading...
After several years of turmoil, Schalke look determined to preserve their Bundesliga status this seasonIf you’ve got an early chance to nail your colours to the mast and make a good impression with your new fans, you have to take it – and that’s exactly what Nico Schlotterbeck did. Earlier this week, shortly after making his Bundesliga debut for Borussia Dortmund, the young Germany centre-back was a guest on a chat show on the club’s in-house television channel in front of a live audience.The Sky presenter Sebastian Hellmann, Schlotterbeck’s fellow panellist, mentioned an upcoming assignment at Schalke’s game with Borussia Mönchengladbach, the Top-Spiel (top game) of the second weekend of the league season, in the prime Saturday early evening, 6.30pm...
On an opening weekend of thrills and spills, Milan looked far more self-assured than their city rivals even as both sides wonThe only thing missing from Serie A’s opening weekend was a bleary-eyed traveller bursting into the room and demanding to know what year it is. Rodrigo Becão scoring a header against Milan? How did a story this unlikely get stuck on repeat? The Udinese centre-back’s three goals in four seasons against the Rossoneri are more than he has managed against every other opponent combined in his professional career.Six hundred miles away, Romelu Lukaku netted on his Inter debut against Lecce, exactly as he did when he joined for the first time in 2019. The shirt on his back has...