What more could you ask of your sporting sibling than the performance Giroud turned in against Napoli on Sunday?As players swapped shirts and fans began to make their way to the exits at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, Olivier Giroud ran a hand over his beard and listened to an interviewer from Dazn complimenting his Italian. His eyebrows raised at the question that followed: “You’re a bit like Zlatan [Ibrahimovic]: you give instructions, you encourage, you motivate your teammates. So now that he’s back, who plays?”It was an unexpected line of enquiry on a night when Giroud had, once again, shifted the course of Serie A’s title race, scoring the goal that delivered Milan victory over Napoli just as his...
Just when it seemed they had blown another chance to go top of Serie A, the Spaniard sank Lazio to set up a seismic meeting with Milan on SundayLuciano Spalletti called it a “crossroads” in Napoli’s season. After their elimination from Europe on Thursday night, his team had no dreams left to pursue beyond a Scudetto bid that appeared to be fading. Top of the table at the start of December, the Partenopei had since fallen behind both Milan clubs and were starting to feel Juventus’s breath on their necks.Results were trending in the wrong direction. More importantly, so were performances. Napoli drew away to Barcelona at the Camp Nou but their 4-2 defeat in the return leg was more...
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...
Perennial runners-up face leaders Inter on Saturday as quest to win Serie A for the first time without Maradona gathers paceLast Sunday, amid jubilant scenes at the Pier Luigi Penzo Stadium, Napoli scored a 100th-minute goal to seal a 2-0 win over Venezia, cutting Internazionale’s lead in Serie A to a single point. The following morning, tickets for their next game – a potential title showdown at home to Inter – went on general sale.Almost immediately, Napoli’s ticket website began to gasp under the sheer volume of traffic. Disgruntled fans complained to the club after spending hours refreshing and rebooting the page, sitting in virtual queues of about 15,000. The stadium box office was a similar story, as restive queues...
Lazio’s impressive win over the Rossoneri has them closing in on the struggling pair with a handful of games remainingWas Fabio Paratici still in denial on Monday night? Before Juventus kicked off away to Fiorentina on Sunday, their chief football officer insisted nobody at the club was even considering the possibility that they might finish outside the top four. By the time this latest round of Serie A games had finished, his team was locked in a three-way tie for third.One of the teams alongside them was Milan. Between the two, it is hard to know which might feel more dread at the prospect of missing out on the Champions League. As winners of the past nine Serie A titles,...