The spellbinding Serie A leaders are starting to believe in a first title since Diego Maradona but they must hold their nerveSerie A’s winter break arrived later than usual this season. The Italian top flight is set to resume on Sunday after a one-weekend pause, having played through Christmas and New Year. If it were up to the Napoli manager, Maurizio Sarri, they would not have stopped at all.“I would prefer to keep going,” he confessed after watching his team beat Verona at the start of this month. And, really, who could blame him? A point clear of Juventus in first place, the Partenopei had been crowned one week earlier as Italy’s campione d’inverno – winter champions – an unofficial...
The Partenopei lead Juve by a point in Italy, where 10 of the last 11 Serie A winners were ‘winter champions’, but memories of that exception remainIt was fitting that Marek Hamsik should grab the winner on Friday night: a record-breaking player adding a final exclamation mark to his team’s record-breaking year. He had overtaken Diego Maradona as Napoli’s all-time leading scorer in Serie A with a strike against Sampdoria just before Christmas. Now he had sunk Crotone with a cool left-foot finish at the Stadio Ezio Scida.This was one of those nights when Napoli should have had a hatful, raining in 23 shots on Alex Cordaz’s goal. As it was, one would suffice to secure their 18th away win...
With no Italy in the World Cup draw Neapolitans were looking for a little joy and Friday night escapism but were again left feeling blue by their former strikerIf Italians were looking to be distracted from a World Cup draw taking place without them on Friday, they had no shortage of options. In fact, some were aggrieved at an excess of watchable TV. Napoli’s game against Juventus had been scheduled at the same time as new episodes of Gomorrah. Such was the outcry that Sky wound up making the latter available on-demand from breakfast time so viewers would not have to choose. In Naples, this was not truly a dilemma. As popular as Roberto Saviano’s crime drama has become, it...
The striker granted just 15 minutes of Italy’s play-off defeat against Sweden continued the scintillating club form that made his omission so controversialIt was a weekend for gallows humour in Italy. “Goals from [Ciro] Immobile and [Lorenzo] Insigne yesterday,” tweeted the wags from Chiamarsi Bomber on Sunday. “So we qualified, right?”In truth, it will take a lot more than a week for a nation to digest its World Cup play-off defeat to Sweden. Gian Piero Ventura was fired as manager of the Azzurri last week, and the Football Federation president Carlo Tavecchio resigned on Monday amid reports that his support base had crumbled. Related: European roundup: Juventus stumble in Serie A title race with loss to Sampdoria Related: All players...
It was ‘Everyone Against Everyone’, as Gazzetta had billed it, but after a Juve shock and Mauro Icardi’s decisive hat-trick, Napoli remained out in frontSooner or later, the wheels had to come off. Napoli set an impossible pace through the first seven games of this Serie A season: taking maximum points while scoring at least three against every opponent.That came to an end on Saturday, as they ran into a Roma side who had conceded only four in total: second-fewest in the division. A team who finished runners-up to Juventus last season, and whose manager, Eusebio Di Francesco, riffed during his pre-game press conference on the old American sporting maxim that defence wins championships. Related: Last-minute penalty by Internazionale’s Mauro...