Milan’s manager has plenty to learn tactically but the 2-1 win over Lazio suggests his man-management is paying dividendsGennaro Gattuso accepted his punishment. Walking out on to the pitch after Milan’s game against Lazio, he bowed his head and entered a circle formed by his players. All at once, they started to hit him – clambering over one another to deliver open-palmed cuffs to the side of his head.In one sense, it was predictable. Lazio had arrived in sensational form, scoring 13 goals in three games as they moved to third in Serie A. Fifteen points separated them from Milan before kick-off. Who hadn’t expected them to turn over the lacklustre Rossoneri, mired in mid-table and missing injured first-choice centre-forward...
The club’s canny acquisitions and the manager’s brand of football where his side refuse to let up even after an opponent’s will has been broken lift them to third placeLazio won at San Siro on Sunday. An impressive feat at any time but all the more so on this occasion because they weren’t playing there. It was their neighbours, Roma, who had travelled to face Inter but a 1-1 draw between those teams was as good as a victory for the Biancocelesti, who took advantage of dropped points to climb into joint third.They had done their part by thrashing Chievo 5-1 in the afternoon. So much for the theory that the winter break might cost Lazio momentum. This was the...
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...
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...
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...