Inter v Juventus drew the focus but the cities’ other teams – Milan and Torino – played a more significant match“Game over.” The words stretched out across the second tier of San Siro’s northern stand on Saturday night in an epic display of schadenfreude. Juventus are champions of Italy for the eighth year running, yet their quest to conquer Europe for the first time since 1996 remains unfulfilled. No club’s supporters enjoy that truth more than those of Inter: the last Serie A team to lift the Champions League.Still, the mockery cut both ways. If the game is over for Juventus in Europe, then domestically it never even began. Inter, in their second season under Luciano Spalletti, were supposed to...
A penalty awarded against Juventus at home in the opening game was just what the VAR was supposed to pick up – but a referee whistling too soon at Bologna proved costly for TorinoIt used to be that a new Serie A season would provide us with a fresh round of discorsi da bar – football talking points to get worked up about over a beer or Monday morning espresso. This year, things went in a different direction. When the final whistles had blown and Giorgia Cardinaletti welcomed us back to Rai 2’s long-running highlights show, Domenica Sportiva, she and her studio guests instead dived straight into discorsi da VAR.Yes, this was the weekend when Italian football fans received their...
Return of striker Andrea Belotti and the authority shown by a rejuvenated Joe Hart against Roma bodes well for the hopes of Sinisa Mihajlovic’s sideThere were a few, subtle, lost-in-translation moments during Joe Hart’s introductory press conference for Torino this month. When the club president, Urbano Cairo, hailed his new signing’s physical presence, the interpreter swapped the word “tall” for “high”. Happily, nobody took this honest mistake for a comment on how the player might like to unwind.Later on, an Italian journalist asked Hart whether he thought Torino could qualify for Europe. But the interpreter put the question more vaguely, asking simply whether he thought that the Granata could have a strong season. “Of course,” came the reply. “We believe...