Italy Serie A News
Roma claim 3-1 away victory to move top of Serie A
Milan take derby honours after Maignan penalty save
Real Madrid were held to an entertaining 2-2 draw at Elche on Sunday after a pulsating second half in which the visitors came from behind twice with Jude Bellingham’s late goal rescuing a point.
The result extended Real’s winless run to three matches in all competitions, but they reclaimed top spot in La Liga, one point ahead of Barcelona.
Continue reading...Sassuolo forward is rarest of beasts – a one-club man – and virtuoso display against Atalanta reinforced his hero status
The man with the moustache held his teammate in a headlock and stared down the TV camera lens. “Berardi!” he yelled, jabbing a finger at the back of his colleague’s bonce. “BE-RAR-DI!”
It felt like that moment in a kids’ movie when the big brother drags his meek sibling back into frame after beating up the school bully. Mess with him again and see what happens. Only, Tarik Muharemovic is nine years younger than Domenico Berardi. And it was the older player, again, who had spent this afternoon tormenting his peers.
Continue reading...Martínez and Bonny score in 2-0 home victory
Real Madrid held to goalless draw by Rayo Vallecano
Inter moved to the top of Serie A with a 2-0 home win against Lazio on Sunday, sealed by goals from Lautaro Martínez early in the first half and Ange-Yoan Bonny after the interval. The result lifted Inter to the summit, level on 24 points with second-placed Roma. Behind them are Milan and Napoli both with 22 points, while Bologna are fifth with 21.
It took three minutes for Martínez to give Inter the lead: receiving the ball inside the box, the captain angled it with the outside of his foot into the far corner. Inter doubled their lead and sent the home crowd into a frenzy in the 62nd minute. Federico Dimarco’s low ball across the face of goal found Bonny free at the back post, leaving him with a simple tap-in.
Continue reading...After spending big there was optimism in Florence, but their season has been a mess that may get worse
Daniele Pradè had described Fiorentina v Lecce as a “question of life or death”, but as the occasion approached he remembered football’s third option: you can always just walk away. On Saturday, a little more than 24 hours before this game was due to take place, he left his role as sporting director of the Viola by mutual consent.
The timing was a surprise, but not the decision. Fiorentina had made a shockingly poor start to the season, collecting four points from their first nine games, and Pradè was adamant that he alone should shoulder the blame. “The club put €90m at my disposal to build the team,” he pointed out last month. “If anyone is responsible for the current situation, it’s me.”
Continue reading...Lamine Yamal and Rashford on target in win over Elche
Milan, Roma and Inter all a point behind leaders Napoli
Goals from Lamine Yamal, Ferran Torres and Marcus Rashford guided Barcelona to a 3-1 victory against Elche on Sunday, propelling the defending champions to second place in La Liga with 25 points, five adrift of the leaders, Real Madrid.
Looking to bounce back after their 2-1 defeat against Madrid in last weekend’s clásico, Barcelona wasted no time in asserting their dominance at Montjuïc’s Olympic Stadium. They made the most of two defensive errors by Elche in the opening minutes to grab a two-goal lead with strikes by Lamine Yamal and Torres in the ninth and 11th minutes.
Continue reading...Real Madrid 4-0 Valencia | Bayern Munich 3-0 Bayer Leverkusen
Coach Patrick Vieira leaves Genoa by mutual consent
Kylian Mbappé netted twice as Real Madrid eased to a 4-0 victory over struggling Valencia, with Jude Bellingham and Alvaro Carreras also scoring to help the La Liga leaders claim their 13th win from 14 matches in all competitions.
The victory extended Real’s commanding lead, putting them seven points clear of second-placed Villarreal and eight ahead of third-placed Barcelona, who sit level with Atlético Madrid on 22 points but have a game in hand.
Continue reading...Club’s winless streak finally ended on Wednesday against Udinese but a significant task awaits the next manager
It was an oddly coy way to announce Serie A’s first sacking this season. “Igor Tudor is no longer the manager of Juventus,” read the Turin club’s social media post on Monday – as though this had happened by accident or mutual consent. The Bianconeri had not, in fact, lost him down the back of the sofa, but instead relieved him of his duties after an eight-game winless run.
That was their longest dry stretch since 2009. Claudio Ranieri got the boot back then, and it was no surprise to see Tudor meet the same fate now. Juventus had failed to score a goal in his final four matches, culminating in a 1-0 loss to Lazio on Sunday night. “I’m living in the present,” he insisted afterward. “I don’t give a stuff about the future.” Yet it came for him the next day all the same.
Continue reading...Tudor departs after just seven months in the job
Sunday’s defeat to Lazio was third loss in the last week
Juventus have sacked their head coach, Igor Tudor, after failing to win their last eight matches in all competitions, the Serie A club said on Monday.
“Juventus FC announces that it has today relieved Igor Tudor of his duties as coach of the men’s first team, along with his staff,” the Italian club said in a statement, a day after their 1-0 defeat to Lazio. Massimo Brambilla, head coach of the reserve team, will temporarily take over as the first team manager, the club added.
Continue reading...Serie A’s best player last season showed his class against Inter despite his coach getting mouthy with former players
Scott McTominay could have been forgiven for a moment of self-pity after Napoli’s 6-2 defeat to PSV in the Champions League last week, a night when he scored twice and still wound up on the wrong end of a historic shellacking. Instead, he was the voice of reason.
While Antonio Conte debuted a new line of complaint, putting aside a career’s worth of laments about employers failing to back him in the transfer market to this time protest that Napoli had bought him too many new players, McTominay said simply: “It’s football. You have to take it on the chin.”
Continue reading...Juventus have not won since 13 September
Roma win 1-0 at Sassuolo to keep pace with Napoli
Juventus lost 1-0 at Lazio in Serie A on Sunday to pile more pressure on their coach, Igor Tudor. The Bianconeri have not won in any competition since 13 September, when they defeated Inter 4-3, and they went a fourth successive match without scoring a goal as they lost in Rome.
A mistake from the Juventus forward Jonathan David led to Lazio’s goal in the ninth minute. The Canada international was deep in his own half and under no pressure when he headed the ball to the home side’s Danilo Cataldi, who laid it off to Toma Basic to drive into the bottom right corner.
Continue reading...Kimmich, Guerreiro and Karl capitalise on Castrop red
De Bruyne off injured after scoring as Napoli beat Inter
Bayern Munich needed more than an hour before breaking the resistance of Borussia Mönchengladbach, to earn a 3-0 victory over opponents who spent more than 75% of the game with 10 men. It was the Bundesliga leaders’ 13th win in 13 matches across all competitions this season.
Joshua Kimmich slotted in after 64 minutes and the substitute Raphaël Guerreiro added another five minutes later before the teenager Lennart Karl, who had scored in their Champions League win over Club Brugge on Wednesday, made it 3-0 in the 81st. Bayern have a maximum 24 points from eight league matches, five ahead of RB Leipzig, 6-0 winners at Augsburg.
Continue reading...Italy’s top clubs – and Real Madrid – watched as the Argentinian overshadowed Kenan Yildiz in battle of playmaking prodigies
The pre-game buzz had this as a showdown between two of world football’s most intriguing young No 10s, Como’s Nico Paz v Juventus’s Kenan Yildiz. A 21-year-old Argentina international whose dazzling debut campaign in Serie A persuaded Tottenham to make an unsuccessful €70m bid to buy him in the summer, taking on the 20-year-old trequartista with 25 appearances already for Turkey’s national team.
Fabio Capello could not pick between them, ranking Paz and Yildiz alongside Roma’s Matías Soulé as the finest “fantasisti” – artistic playmakers – in Serie A today. The newspaper Il Giornale played on the players’ shirt number and young age as they billed it as a battle “da ‘10’ (e lode)”. In the Italian academic system, a grade of 110 e lode (with honours) is the highest one can achieve.
Continue reading...Serie A: Como 2-0 Juventus, Milan 2-1 Fiorentina
Juve now winless in six games in all competitions
Juventus lost 2-0 at Como in Serie A on Sunday, suffering another disappointing result after five successive draws in all competitions for Igor Tudor’s side.
Como took the lead in the fourth minute when the defender Marc-Oliver Kempf volleyed in from close range at the far post following Nico Paz’s curling cross. Juventus thought they had equalised in the 36th minute when Jonathan David slotted home from close range, but the Canadian’s effort was ruled out for offside in the buildup.
Continue reading...Kane scores as Bayern Munich beat Borussia Dortmund
Barcelona edge Girona via Araújo’s stoppage-time winner
Harry Kane scored once and helped set up another as Bayern Munich battled past Borussia Dortmund 2-1 in the Bundesliga’s Klassiker to maintain their perfect start to the season with their seventh straight win. Bayern had to survive considerable second-half pressure from the visitors before making sure of their 11th win in 11 matches across all competitions.
They lead the Bundesliga race with 21 points, five ahead of second-placed RB Leipzig. Dortmund, who suffered their first loss in 10 matches across all competitions, dropped to fourth on 14. Kane gave the hosts a deserved lead when he scored his 12th league goal in seven matches with a glancing header from a Joshua Kimmich corner in the 22nd minute.
Continue reading...Como insist relocating Milan game ‘not a matter of greed’
Italian side highlight gulf in revenues to Premier League
The Italian club Como have released a statement on their potential Serie A match against Milan in Australia, claiming that taking games abroad is about “ensuring survival” for the league.
Uefa has reluctantly given approval for the match – a home league fixture for Milan – to take place in Perth next February. In addition, Villarreal’s La Liga match against Barcelona in December is set to take place in Miami, Florida.
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