José Mourinho’s Roma could not deal with Inter’s power while Olivier Giroud once again came to Milan’s rescue at LazioAmid a breathless finish to the Serie A season, spare a thought for your narrators who don’t know where to begin. In Empoli, where Napoli surrendered their title bid by conceding three times in seven minutes to opponents who had not won a game since December? Or at San Siro, where Internazionale thumped a Roma side led by José Mourinho, the man who led them to the treble, and who arrived on a 12-game unbeaten run in the league?Perhaps we should start in Rome, where Milan kept the title race alive with a 91st-minute strike from a 21-year-old midfielder who almost...
Juventus were incensed as the Serie A champions took their first away Derby d’Italia victory since 2012The Derby d’Italia was only 34 minutes old, but already we had seen blood, sweat and tears – and that was just Manuel Locatelli. The game had barely begun when Lautaro Martínez’s high boot caught the Juventus midfielder in the face, opening a gash above his left eye. Locatelli soldiered on, only to injure his knee while raising his own studs into a challenge on Danilo D’Ambrosio.Some journalists speculated that he might have ruptured his cruciate ligament as they saw him hobble to the sideline weeping. Perhaps Locatelli is just a man willing to share his emotions. He cried on the pitch after scoring...
The manager utilised his talent-packed bench to snuff out a rampant Inter and the Champions League tie in eight minutesJürgen Klopp had seen enough. With almost an hour played at San Siro, Internazionale cutting his team to ribbons and the home crowd buoyant, the Liverpool manager retreated to his bench in dim spirits. There were a few seconds of discussion with his coaches. Training tops were peeled off, tactical instructions issued, last-minute warm-ups executed. And then, the flourish: a triple substitution in the 59th minute.Off came Sadio Mané, Fabinho and Harvey Elliott. Diogo Jota had already gone off injured at half‑time. It was Klopp’s inimitable way of telling his players that he wasn’t angry, just disappointed. Continue reading...
The Napoli stalwart, headed for Toronto, scored a penalty but Edin Dzeko’s goal kept the title race wide openAt least Lorenzo Insigne will not need to be taught another lesson by his children. He had barely made it back to his car after Napoli’s win over Torino in October when his sons, eight-year-old Carmine and six-year-old Christian, warned him that they would be getting the football out and showing him how to strike a penalty as soon as they got home.Maybe they had some good pointers. The tame effort saved by Vanja Milinkovic-Savic in that match was Insigne’s third missed spot-kick of the season. Since then, he has converted four out of four. After Inter’s Stefan De Vrij kicked the...
Forward turned the derby on its head with a quickfire double that breathed life into the title race – and the dreaded No 9 shirtEven Olivier Giroud was starting to wonder if he might have jinxed himself. The Frenchman had no hesitation in accepting Milan’s No 9 shirt after he joined last summer, shrugging off the fact that no player in a decade had hit double figures while wearing it in Serie A. Ten players had tried and failed – among them such talented goalscorers as Gonzalo Higuaín, Fernando Torres and André Silva – but Giroud insisted: “I’m not superstitious.”By the turn of the year, he was sounding a little less confident. “I don’t believe in the curse of the...