Lessons Learned from Giornata 20

After this weekend’s action, the eyes of Italy will be on its largest met­ro­pol­i­tan city.  The Milan derby could move AC Milan within strik­ing dis­tance of first or could help Inter Milan put some dis­tance between itself and its rival.  And the two clubs are approach­ing this game from oppo­site direc­tions: Inter strik­ing some luck to grab a point from Bari and AC Milan eas­ily dis­patch­ing Siena.  This will likely be the last time the top two clubs in Serie A will face each other this sea­son, so sit back and enjoy the game.

In other action this weekend:

Luca Toni looked like a good sign­ing for Roma

… at least this week­end.  Despite miss­ing injured cap­tain Francesco Totti, Roma cruised to a vic­tory over Genoa with two goals from the newly-acquired Toni.  The story, how­ever, was just as much Roma’s defense, which held the vis­i­tors to one shot on goal.  The win pro­pelled Roma into third place in the stand­ings, an incred­i­ble rise con­sid­er­ing where they were in November.

Fiorentina needs to find some consistency

It is hard to jus­tify your spot in the Cham­pi­ons League when you can­not pro­duce con­sist results against clubs you should beat.  Despite a blis­ter­ing start after the win­ter break by beat­ing Bari and Siena, the Viola fell at home to a team that had only four wins on the sea­son and none on the road.  While the win helped Bologna climb out of the rel­e­ga­tion zone, the loss for Fiorentina dropped them four points behind Napoli for the fourth spot in the standings.

The Fer­rara fir­ing watch continues

Rami has an excel­lent post up on the sit­u­a­tion but it is worth not­ing two things about Juven­tus’ loss to Chievo this week­end — Juven­tus could not win despite hav­ing pos­ses­sion for two-thirds of the match and  Chievo had lost three straight prior to this match.  For fans of the beau­ti­ful game, the ques­tion is: who gets fired first, Fer­rara at Juve or Rafa Ben­itez at Liverpool?

Bor­tolo Mutti may be the best man­age­r­ial sign­ing this season

Granted his Ata­lanta squad beat a strug­gling Lazio team at home, but they did so in dom­i­nat­ing fash­ion: a 3–0 drub­bing that was over before the half­time whis­tle.  This was a Lazio club that had been win­ning of late, specif­i­cally hav­ing not lost in 2010.  While they still have a long sea­son ahead of them to avoid rel­e­ga­tion, Mutti seems to have them on the right track.

Tagged as: AC Milan, AS Bari, AS Roma, Atalanta, Bologna, Bortolo Mutti, Ciro Ferrara, Fiorentina, Francesco Totti, Genoa, Inter Milan, Juventus, Lazio, Liverpool FC, Luca Toni, Milan Derby, Napoli, Siena