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...
The result was seen as a formality when city officials moved Napoli’s kick-off time but it gave the visitors a point to proveYou would think the prefect of a city as superstitious as Naples might have worried a little more about tempting fate. To place a loaf of bread upside down on the dinner table is to invite bad luck on yourself in southern Italy, yet Claudio Palomba had no qualms requesting that the footballing calendar be flipped on its head so the home team could win Serie A at a more convenient time.Napoli were originally scheduled to host Salernitana on Saturday. Seventeen points clear at the top of the table, with seven games left to play, they knew a...
Maurizio Sarri said he wanted to win the Rome derby more than a Conference League tie. And win the derby they didLazio let the side down on Thursday when they became the only Italian club to be eliminated from Europe all season. Serie A sent six teams through to continental quarter-finals for the first time this century, but the Biancocelesti’s defeat to AZ Alkmaar cost the league a clean sweep. Maurizio Sarri pointed to a congested calendar, saying his team was “probably not structurally ready for these competitions”.Was it that, or did their priorities simply lie elsewhere? In the same breath, Sarri had acknowledged “there’s less energy around the club when it comes to a competition like the Conference League”....
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...
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...