‘Bomber, Champion, Legend: thanks to you we know nothing is impossible.’ It was left to other teams to prove that last pointThe match was over but nobody wanted to go home, as if leaving this place meant letting go of him. To stay was to hold on a little while longer. One more time, Sampdoria’s supporters at the Marassi started to sing. “Luca Vialli, Luca Vialli, Luca Vialli alé alé, we love you and we adore you, you are better than Pelé.”There was no malice toward the Brazilian here, no intent to disrespect the memory of a player who died at the end of December. This has been their ode to Vialli for decades, since he was a twentysomething firing...
Genoa’s captain could have left for Toronto but stayed to battle relegation, which made his penalty miss all the more painfulDomenico Criscito could have been 4,000 miles away. Everything was agreed for the defender to join Toronto FC at the start of March, swapping a relegation battle at Genoa for an adventure in Canada. It sounded like the perfect way to wind down a career: playing alongside Lorenzo Insigne, an old friend with whom he has shared family holidays.As the moment of departure neared, however, the thought of abandoning Genoa in such a perilous state gnawed away at him. The Grifone were the first professional club to take a chance on Criscito, signing him from Sporting Volla in Naples and...
As the city reconnects two years after tragedy, Genoa and Sampdoria played a Derby della Lanterna unlike any other“Can happiness be sad?” The question was posed by Fabio Quagliarella in an open letter published this week by Gazzetta dello Sport. The Sampdoria captain was looking ahead to Wednesday’s derby against Genoa, but also to the imminent inauguration of the Saint George bridge, built to reconnect a city divided since the Morandi bridge collapsed two years ago.As Quagliarella observed, the new construction will benefit everyone who lives in Genoa. Designed by the renowned architect Renzo Piano, its lights and supporting pillars have been shaped to evoke sailing vessels and reflect the city’s maritime traditions. Yet its existence will always be a...
Never before in this era of domestic domination have they established sole possession of first place so early in a campaignTime to release the confetti, pass out the champagne and discover what clunky social media pun Juventus have planned to follow on from #Le6end and #My7th. The Bianconeri are champions of Italy for the eighth consecutive year. Or so you might think, thumbing through some of the coverage of a weekend when they moved two points clear at the top.“There is no anti-Juve,” declared the front page of Gazzetta dello Sport on Monday. Inside the pink paper, Sebastiano Vernazza lamented: “Serie A seems to have become a close relative of the Belorussian league, where Bate Borisov have won for 12...
After collecting a point from their opening 18 matches, have Benevento turned their luck around courtesy of the resurgence of a journeyman striker?Sampdoria were seeing witches on Saturday. So was everyone else in Italy, to be fair. This was the weekend when La Befana made her annual visit, dropping off gifts for good children and lumps of coal for the naughty. Whether this kindly old lady, riding a broomstick that she uses to sweep each house before she leaves, should technically be considered a witch is the subject of scholarly debate but she is widely depicted as one. It is not La Befana, though, who appears on Benevento’s crest. Their witch is a manifestation of the city’s pagan traditions, dating...