Serie A Gameday 3 confirmed the trend going on since the first week of this campaign: Juventus and AC Roma will battle each other for the title, Napoli and Fiorentina are in delay, Inter Milan and AC Milan are still not ready to compete at the highest levels of the league.
Serie A Day 3 Recap
In the first game on the day on Saturday, Cesena and Empoli played each other in a highly entertaining match. The deceiving score of 2-2 suggested it would have been another week full of goals, but as we will see, in the end that was not the case. The home team went up 2-0 early despite being outplayed by the “Azzurri.” It would not last as the visitor’s superiority found its peak in the second part of the game, when a penalty from Ciccio Tavano and a late goal by youngster Daniele Rugani, gave them precious away points at Dino Manuzzi Stadium.
The highly awaited showdown between AC Milan and Juventus took place Saturday evening. The “Rossoneri” fielded Keisuke Honda, Stafan El Shaarawy and Jeremie Menez up front, while on the other side Fernando Llorente and Carlos Tevez were Massimiliano Allegri’s choice for the attack.
Filippo Inzaghi was expecting the perfect game from his 11, the team was improving match after match, leaving room for hopes. Two victories in a row, 8 goals scored and not having to play European Cups, made for a good background where to build something important. Unfortunately for the former Italian International and 2006 World Cup champion, Allegri inherited a terrific group, filled with experience and perseverance, pimped up with class and skill, as the game showed.
Juventus waited for the “Rossoneri” with patience, controlling the game, hitting them when time was right with the “Apache” Carlos Tevez served by Paul Pogba with superb precision.
The 1-0 win is enough for the “Bianconeri” to keep leading the table. As for AC Milan, the third spot in the ranking could be improved in the middle of the week when it will pay visit to Tuscany side Empoli.
It took 13 minutes to AS Roma to get rid of Cagliari, one-two, and the Sardinians were knocked down. Francesco Totti was left on the bench once again as well as Miralem Pjanic and Adem Ljajic. This left space to youngsters the likes of Mattia Destro and Alessandro Florenzi, who gave the home team a comfortable lead, allowing them to control the rest of the game with minimum effort. Florenzi’s run towards his grandma in tears, sitting in the stand celebrating the victory, goes straight to fans’ epic moments memories. It has to be noted, that teams like Cagliari are not expected to test the “scudetto” claims of Rudi Garcia’s men, nevertheless, the authority with which they manage to wipe out such challengers is impressive. Expect a beautiful head-to-head run towards the title, that will have its first clash at the beginning of October at Juventus Stadium. The atmosphere is definitely getting warmer.
Napoli’s “day of revenge” turned out to be a “day of disaster”. Rafa Benitez applied his famous heavy turn-over, leaving Marek Hamsik, Jose’ Callejon, Dries Mertens and Gokhan Inler on the bench. Skepticism gradually left space for interest as the “Azzurri” dominated Udinese in the first half leaving no chances to the hosts and hitting the framework with a screamer shot by Walter Gargano from outside the box. Napoli managed to block “Bianconeri” incursions on the wings by siding Camilo Zuniga as fake winger cutting out of the game a frustrated Antonio Di Natale.
Fans’ fears materialized in the second half though, when after conceding another goal from a dead ball, their team lacked the necessary personality required to overthrow the score. At the end of day came another defeat, the second after 3 matches. Same old problems, still no solutions and it is fair to wonder at this point, if a change of coach would give the required push to finally get out of this early crisis. Next Wednesday the “Derby of the South” between Napoli and Palermo looks to be a “hot” one.
In other games:
Fiorentina suffered tremendously in order to beat a well fielded Atalanta, Jasmin Kurtic’s goal gave the “Viola” the first 3 points of the season.
Inter Milan went under in the 3rd minute, when Palermo’s Spanish midfielder, Franco Vazquez, gave the local team the lead. The “Sicilian” piled up scoring chances, but didn’t manage to finalize them, so after Mateo Kovacic equilized for the “Neroazzurri”, the result didn’t change anymore.
Parma impressed again with their scoring attitude up front, Antonio Cassano’s class, supported by his teammates motivated the “Gialloblu'” to come back 1 goal down against Chievo. The final score was 2-3 in favour of Roberto Donadoni’s men.
Unlucky Lazio lost an unbelivable game in Genova, attacking furiously for big part of it, they were deafeted by a Mauricio Pinilla really late goal.
Omar El Kaddouri’s missed penalty gave Verona 3 points at the Stadio Olimpico against Torino. The “Gialloblu'” find themselves, quite surprisingly, right after Juventus and AS Roma in the table. Seven points secure them a second spot, confirming the good results achieved last season.
Finally we saw a scoreless tie between Sassuolo and Sampdoria.
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