After Juve’s walkover win over Napoli was cancelled and they lost 3-0 to Fiorentina, could it finally be someone else’s year?There have been times in Juventus’s recent history when dropping six points in a month might have been considered as a run of poor form. On Tuesday, they saw that number slip away in the space of less than six hours.First came the news that the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) had overturned the decision by Serie A’s sporting justice to award Juventus a 3-0 win for their unplayed game against Napoli in October. The Partenopei were a no-show for that fixture in Turin after two members of their first team, and a further member of staff, tested positive for Covid-19....
Since Eduardo Coudet took over, no one in La Liga has won more, scored more or conceded fewer. It is a new dawnEduardo Coudet was pissed off, getting angrier and more drunk by the minute. The fact that Rosario Central had been beaten 4-0 in the first leg of the Copa Conmebol final was bad enough, but it was past two in the morning and he was still stuck inside an empty stadium, unable to escape the humiliation, left with nothing to do but dwell on it. That and drink. His name came up with Pablo Sánchez, sent to the anti-doping room together. But however hard they tried, however much beer they downed – and it was a lot –...
Winning the Scudetto was not on Milan’s list of objectives for this season, but investing this January would seem a wise moveRafael Leão needed 6.76 seconds to score, and four hours to become a Serie A punchline. His goal for Milan against Sassuolo was the fastest ever in the Italian top flight, and across any of Europe’s top five leagues. When Luis Muriel found the net within a minute of coming on as a substitute in Atalanta’s game later that afternoon, his teammate Matteo Pessina leapt from the bench to chide him: “Who do you think you are? Leão?”Over in Venice, meanwhile, the phone of Paolo Poggi would not stop buzzing. His strike for Piacenza against Fiorentina (8.9 seconds) had...
Without a win since 17 January, Tasmania Berlin’s infamous run set in 1966 is now perilously close for Die KönigsblauenNever mind needing Christmas to absorb everything that’s happened to Schalke in 2020; we might need the holidays just to make sense of everything that’s happened in the space of the last week. Eight days ago, Manuel Baum’s team were within seconds of lifting a gargantuan weight from their shoulders by way of a first Bundesliga win of the season, at Augsburg.Since then we’ve had Marco Richter’s 93rd-minute equaliser that put an end to those hopes, a comprehensive home defeat to Freiburg which was more in keeping with their season so far, the sacking of Baum – the second head coach...
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....