Inter overthrew Juventus, who had a season to forget, even if Gigi Buffon offered a sterling farewell. It’s awards time!Less than a week has passed since the end of the Serie A season, and already it feels like some distant era. Eight of the league’s top 10 clubs have said farewell to their managers, including the newly-crowned champions and the team they just deposed.Juventus’s decision to move on from Andrea Pirlo came as no surprise. The winners of the previous nine Scudetti could not content themselves with barely scraping into the top four. Antonio Conte’s separation from Inter was another matter. After Inter raised the Coppa Campioni d’Italia on Sunday, the club president, Steven Zhang, had told reporters that their...
Cristiano Ronaldo could only watch as Juventus squeaked into the Champions League thanks to Napoli falling at the lastJuventus spent the final seconds of the 2020-21 season huddled around a mobile phone they had borrowed from a journalist. After nine consecutive Serie A titles, the team that hoped to play a leading role in a breakaway European Super League had been reduced to waiting and watching somebody else decide whether they could finish among Italy’s top four. Related: European roundup: Lille win at Angers to seal first Ligue 1 title in 10 years Kessie from the spot again! Milan secure Champions League qualification and second place in Serie A to go with it! ⚫Juventus grab the final Champions League place...
Milan won at Juve for the first time in 10 years and the consequences for both teams could be wide-rangingIf a single image could capture how far Juventus’s sights have fallen in this catastrophic campaign, it might be the anguish on Paulo Dybala’s face after he fired wide at the end of their defeat to Milan. There were seconds left to play at Allianz Stadium, too few to believe his team had any chance of rescuing a positive result from a game they were losing 3-0. Dybala was desperate not because he thought Juventus might pinch a draw but because, on the night they dropped out of the top four, one goal would at least prevent them from giving up...
Inter’s manager ended Juve’s 3,283-day reign after persevering for two years to elevate good players into winning onesIt was Sassuolo who applied the final lick of paint to Antonio Conte’s masterpiece. The Internazionale manager had warned for weeks against presumption, insisting his team were not champions yet even as they pulled away at the top of Serie A. “We hope to finish what we started this season,” he said. “That would truly be a work of art.”A 2-0 win at Crotone on Saturday moved Inter to within a point of the Scudetto. The scenes in the changing room felt like a title celebration, as players bounced on benches and sang terrace chants about the league leaders pulling away. Mathematically, though,...
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,...