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...
Marco Giampaolo is playing down talk of special season for a Sampdoria side flying high with a dynamic midfield trio of young 20-somethings at its heartDon’t call it fake news. If you ask the Sampdoria manager Marco Giampaolo, the idea that his team might compete for a Champions League spot this season is more like “science-fiction”. That was the term he used on Saturday night, after guiding his team to victory in the Derby della Lanterna. Why would we moot such a possibility? A 2-0 win only kept them in sixth place – five points outside the top four. It was not a surprising result on its own terms; Genoa started and finished the day in the relegation zone. The...
Juventus’s Gonzalo Higuaín proved the difference at San Siro as the top five teams’ dominance continued, as did talk of reducing Serie A from 20 teamsThe debate about how many clubs should compete in Serie A never really went away. Italian football’s top division has expanded and contracted many times in almost 90 years of existence. At its smallest, it has contained only 16 teams, and at its largest, an awkward 21. Right now, we are back at 20 but there has been a growing clamour to reduce that figure. The Italian Football Federation’s own president, Carlo Tavecchio, has repeatedly stated his belief that 18 teams would be “perfect”. On the evidence of this season so far, you could make...
After a week of ultras-related outrage and public relations damage in Italy, the only surprise, regrettably, is that anyone should still be surprisedOf all the stadiums Lazio could visit on Wednesday, it had to be the Renato Dall’Ara. Their week had begun amidst outrage after ultras affixed anti-semitic stickers, including mocked-up images of Anne Frank in a Roma shirt, to plexiglass barriers inside their own Stadio Olimpico. Now supporters travelling to their away game against Bologna would occupy a stand dedicated to the memory of Arpad Weisz.A Jewish Hungarian, Weisz came to Italy late in his playing career and stayed on afterwards to move into coaching. He remains the youngest manager ever to win Serie A, having led Inter –...
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...