Juventus, Inter, Lazio, Milan and Atalanta are queuing up for a crack at the Scudetto after a summer of change in ItalyThe post-Scudetto cleanup in Naples took more than a month, local authorities reporting they had gathered up enough banners and blue and white ribbons to cover the length of 400 football pitches. Those were just the ones hung on public property. In bars, restaurants and the windows of homes all over the city, Napoli’s first Serie A title in 33 years will continue to be celebrated as long as there are people to remember it.Now, though, they must defend their crown. Easier said than done: Italy has had a different champion in each of the past four seasons. A...
Milan’s narrow victory in Turin sealed a top-four finish but for Juventus the scandal over alleged false accounting rolls onIt should have been blood and thunder, two of Italian football’s biggest clubs squaring off on the penultimate weekend with Champions League football on the line. Juventus and Milan instead gave us dull, with blunders, in front of a listless crowd.Significant sections of the Allianz Stadium were empty at kick-off. Fewer than 500 Milan supporters had made the short trip to Turin, others balking at the €80 ticket price in the away section. Juventus Ultras from the Curva Sud, meanwhile, were staging a protest outside against what they perceive as heavy-handed treatment from their club, including restrictions on flags, banners and...
Napoli winning the Serie A title is a fait accompli but Juventus’s continuing legal issues leave so much else up in the airIt was not the goal that sealed Napoli’s third-ever Scudetto, but it sure felt like it, an emotion so overpowering that some players could not keep their feet. As Giacomo Raspadori’s volley skidded through Wojciech Szczesny’s legs and into the Juventus net, Piotr Zielinski simply collapsed on to his back, lying spreadeagled on the Allianz Stadium turf.Raspadori’s strike arrived in the 93rd minute, securing a 1-0 win. Napoli scarcely needed the points – they were already 14 clear of second-placed Lazio before kick-off – but five days removed from a Champions League quarter-final defeat to Milan, they needed...
Midfielder deserves football’s understanding for the kidnapping and threats that are damaging his life and careerIt is seven years since Paul Pogba joined Manchester United from Juventus for a then world-record fee of £89m. He was 23 and had already won four Serie A titles. He had been named young player of the tournament at the previous World Cup. He was a star on the rise, the sort of player who might conceivably drag United out of their post-Alex Ferguson slump.Pogba had apparently only one fault: he seemed a player out of time, a box-to-box midfielder in an age that had outgrown them. Midfields had split into two bands, and he didn’t quite have the tight technical ability to play...
Two outsider managers in Maurizio Sarri and José Mourinho have the capital’s clubs going deep in Serie A’s top-four battleThe Scudetto is still heading to Naples, but for one weekend Serie A belonged to the city of Rome. On Friday night Lazio toppled league leaders Napoli at their own stadium. On Sunday, Roma beat the Juventus side who would be second if it weren’t for the 15-point penalty handed them at the start of this year.Both games followed a similar pattern in being settled by a single second-half goal. Lazio’s reward was to finish the weekend third in the table. Roma are one point behind them in joint-fourth. Continue reading...