Lessons Learned from Giornata 21

A nice quiet week­end in Serie A.  For­tu­nately, there were no matches of inter­est and no con­tro­versy that came out of the matches.  Noth­ing unusual or inter­est­ing at all.

REUTERS/Alessandro Garo­falo

Or not.  In a week­end high­lighted by the top two squads fac­ing off, injuries to star play­ers, and an odd mask cel­e­bra­tion, let’s take a moment to look back on the insanity.

Nine is fine for Inter Milan

Accord­ing to the poll at the end of my post, over 50% of you thought AC Milan would win by two goals or more.  If we’d have known Inter would have played most of the match with ten men, how high would the per­cent­age have jumped?  Instead, it was i Ner­az­zurri who dom­i­nated the match despite Wes­ley Snei­jder being sent off in the 26th minute and Lucio receiv­ing a red card in sec­ond half stop­page time.  Marco Mat­er­azzi, the famous “vic­tim” of the Zdane head butt in the World Cup, cel­e­brated by mock­ing the Ital­ian prime min­is­ter with a mask.  What a match.

Roma should enjoy its success

AS Roma’s 2–1 vic­tory over Juven­tus may be its high point of the sea­son.  Roma sees itself in third place, only two points behind AC Milan for sec­ond place.  But it also sees its new acqui­si­tion out for six weeks (Luca Toni) plus a daunt­ing sched­ule ahead — while they have Inter and AC Milan at home, they have almost all of the top 10 clubs away.  Roma’s away record:  3–5-3 while allow­ing 17 goals.

Napoli hangs on to fourth

Napoli’s 2–0 win over Livorno moves them three points clear of Palermo (!) for the last Cham­pi­ons League spot.  How­ever it took a penalty kick against a mid­fielder fill­ing in for a keeper in the 90th minute to get the full three points.  They have a chance to prove they belong with three of their next five matches against Genoa, Inter and Roma — all at home.

Bari blew a good oppor­tu­nity to gain points

Do you think Giampieo Ven­tura will have night­mares about Henry Gimenez?  Bari had an excel­lent chance (and an early goal) to take care of a rel­e­ga­tion can­di­date in Bologna, but instead allowed two goals to Gimenez to fall into 11th place.  Bari has to learn the les­son — if you want to com­pete for a Euro­pean com­pe­ti­tion spot, you have to win these type of matches.

Tagged as: AC Milan, AS Bari, AS Roma, Inter Milan, Juventus, Luca Toni, Marco Materazzi, Milan Derby, Napoli, Palermo, Silvio Berlusconi, Wesley Sneijder