Football

Serie A undercard stars but anger grows as postponements pile up | Nicky Bandini


Atalanta and Lecce did their best to pick up the slack on a weekend missing its headline act. Cagliari and Roma, too. For the second week running, Serie A’s Sunday schedule was reduced to two games, with the rest all postponed amid disagreement over the appropriate response to Italy’s coronavirus outbreaks. This time, the cancellations included the Derby d’Italia.

No other match could capture the imagination like that one: Juventus taking on Internazionale in the first season when both have truly contested the title against one another for almost two decades. But the four teams who did take the field entertained us instead by combining for 16 goals.

Some were magnificent. The scores were level in Lecce when Josip Ilicic beat a man in midfield, exchanged a one-two with the wing-back and then took out another pair of defenders with his through-ball for Papu Gómez. After the Argentinian’s shot was blocked, Ilicic arrived first to the rebound, shifting the ball across his body with his right boot and picking out the bottom corner with his left.

There were fewer stages to João Pedro’s opener in Sardinia, but it was sensational all the same. Running on to Christian Oliva’s long pass forward, the Brazilian tamed it on his thigh and then floated a half-volley over Pau López despite the keeper being barely a step off his line. Not every strike was so deliberate. Atalanta were irresistible in the second half away to Lecce, accelerating from 2-2 at the interval to win 7-2, but their opener was a bizarre own goal that came off the side of Giulio Donati’s head. Roma, similarly, took their first step towards a 4-3 victory at Cagliari when Luca Pellegrini sliced a clearance into the path of Nikola Kalinic five yards out.

Premier Sports ?
(@PremierSportsTV)

? INCREDIBLE GOAL FROM JOÃO PEDRO!

? What an audacious finish from the Cagliari forward

⚽ Roma respond almost instantly through Kalinic too, and it’s 1-1 pic.twitter.com/No7H6lA0eE


March 1, 2020

There was good and bad on the pitch. Off it, this season is threatening to get ugly. The decision to postpone five games in the north of Italy was made by Lega Serie A – the governing body for Italy’s top flight – on Saturday. A sixth, Verona v Sampdoria, scheduled for Monday, was added to the list one day later.

What provoked the late change of heart? On Thursday the Lega had announced that those original five games – Juventus v Inter, Udinese v Fiorentina, Milan v Genoa, Parma v Spal and Sassuolo v Brescia – would go ahead as scheduled, behind closed doors.

The government’s ban on mass public gatherings in regions where cases of Covid-19 had been diagnosed ran through 1 March. Lobbying efforts to make a special case for the Derby d’Italia – seizing on the fact that initial legislation introduced in Piedmont only extended to 29 February – were unsuccessful.

Inter rejected a proposal to delay the game by one day, and believed the matter to been settled. Saturday’s decision to impose a longer postponement provoked an angry back-and-forth between their CEO Beppe Marotta – formerly of Juventus – and the president of the Lega, Paolo Dal Pino.

Matches at Milan, Parma, Sampdoria, Sassuolo and Udinese were all postponed.



Matches at Milan, Parma, Sampdoria, Sassuolo and Udinese were all postponed. Photograph: Flavio Lo Scalzo/Reuters

The latter insisted his role was to look out for the league’s best interests, which could not be served by having such a prestigious game – set to be broadcast to more than 200 countries – played before an empty stadium. That visual would have made for a dismal contrast on a night when Spain’s Clasico was competing for that same international audience.

Inter’s interests, though, have been harmed. Their fixture list was already at breaking point after last week’s game against Sampdoria was postponed. If they were to reach the finals of the Europa League and Coppa Italia, then under the current schedule they will not have an open date until 20 May: four days before the end of the Serie A season.

This, furthermore, might have been an ideal weekend to face Juventus, who were dismal in their Champions League defeat to Lyon. Playing later will give the champions more time to recover the likes of Giorgio Chiellini and Sami Khedira from injury.

So why not accept the one-day delay? Marotta was justified in questioning how much difference it would have made from a public health standpoint, yet it was also apparent from a footballing standpoint that Inter stood to benefit from playing behind closed doors. Juventus have lost five games this season, but their home record shows 16 wins and one draw.

The Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email.

If the game had gone ahead on Monday, then home fans would have been allowed in, but away fans travelling from Milan would not. The government has lifted its ban in Piedmont, but extended it for another week in other regions including Lombardy.

Whatever happens next, it is hard to envisage a scenario that does not end in bitter recriminations. A group of Inter fans protested outside the Lega’s offices on Sunday. A banner asked whether this was Calciopoli all over again. “Shameful Lega, you should be embarrassed” read another, on which each instance of the letter “i” (in the original Italian) had been replaced with a Juventus logo.

A decision on rescheduling should arrive this Wednesday, when the league has called an emergency assembly of clubs. It is expected that the postponed games will be played this coming weekend, displacing Serie A’s scheduled 27th round of fixtures. Those would instead be played on Wednesday 13 May – previously marked the Coppa Italia final, which would have to be pushed back until after Serie A ends, and potentially moved away from Rome due to the Stadio Olimpico being booked for Euro 2020.

Juventus v Inter, in this scenario, would be played on Monday 9 March.

Assuming no further extension to government bans, this would allow Inter fans from Lombardy to attend.

Lost in the background is the knock-on impact for Serie A’s other 18 clubs.

Cagliari 3-4 Roma, Lazio 2-0 Bologna, Lecce 2-7 Atalanta, Napoli 2-1 Torino

POSTPONED
Milan v Genoa
Parma v Spal
Sampdoria v Verona
Sassuolo v Brescia
Udinese v Fiorentina

Several would have preferred simply to play behind closed doors this weekend. Fiorentina’s CEO, Joe Barone, argued that “the rules should be the same for everyone. Either we all play or nobody.” Sassuolo’s Giovanni Carnevali demanded continuity, “otherwise let’s suspend the league, since we don’t have enough dates to get the games in”. Then again, perhaps it will not be Juventus or Inter who benefit as a result of all this disruption. While they kicked their heels this weekend, Lazio beat Bologna 2-0, and went two points clear at the top. It was another irresistible performance from Luis Alberto, who scored one goal and set up the other before being taken off to prevent him from exacerbating a thigh twinge.

They had been caught up in a scheduling drama of their own, with president Claudio Lotito refusing a request to bring forward this week’s game against Atalanta in order that the Bergamo club could have more time to prepare for a Champions League second leg against Valencia. The discussion may become moot if the entire schedule gets rearranged.

Further disputes lie in wait. The football in Serie A remains as compelling as it has been all season. The tricky part from here might just be getting it played.





READ SOURCE

Leave a Reply

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.