Five Things To Note From Serie A This Weekend

Serie A is becom­ing more and more inter­est­ing, and with Lazio con­tin­u­ing their win­ning streak, could we see a sur­prise win­ner for the scud­etto? Lazio are cur­rently first in the table with a four point lead on sec­ond placed Inter Milan. While we’re just nine games into the sea­son, maybe Lazio can man­age sec­ond place? We’ll just have to see if their good form con­tin­ues, or whether they’ll die down into the midtable.

1. Mutu returns for Fiorentina

After a nine-month dop­ing ban, there was doubt whether Mutu would even con­tinue his football-playing career. But the Roman­ian returned in great form for Fiorentina, play­ing a full 90 min­utes away against Cata­nia. Although the match ended 0–0, there were some sparks of action, like when Mas­cara hit the wood­work from a free kick, and when Mutu had a great header par­ried by Cata­nia keeper Andu­jar. Yet Mutu’s return couldn’t mask the way that Mihajlovic’s side played, and Fiorentina weren’t play­ing well enough to earn three points. Mutu had a great shot saved by Andu­jar again, stop­ping him from a dream return. But Mutu’s return is cer­tainly a pos­i­tive thing for Fiorentina fans, espe­cially with the lack of Jovetic’s cre­ativ­ity, they now have some­one expe­ri­enced who can score impor­tant goals.

2. Bari sink to 20th with lat­est defeat

Last sea­son Bari were a fan­tas­tic team which went out to win matches against the top teams of the Serie A, but it’s a dif­fer­ent story this year. While Bari fin­ished in 10th place last sea­son, a won­der­ful fin­ish for a newly-promoted side, this sea­son they find them­selves bot­tom of the table. Their lat­est defeat was to Udi­nese, and both goals were fan­tas­tic. The first was a wonder-strike into the top-left-hand cor­ner from Alexis Sanchez, and the sec­ond was a pow­er­ful fin­ish by Isla into the cross­bar and into the back of Gillet’s net. So what has hap­pened to Giampiero Ventura’s side? And do you think that Ven­tura could be sacked, and replaced by who? Remem­ber to com­ment below regard­ing Bari’s sit­u­a­tion at the bot­tom of the table.

3. The rel­e­ga­tion bat­tle will be tight

Look­ing at the table, some­thing struck me regard­ing who might go down to the Serie B, this season’s rel­e­ga­tion bat­tle will be very inter­est­ing. What makes me say that is the fact that there are 10 teams within three points of the bot­tom of the table. That mean that if your team has a bad match, and a cou­ple of other sides have a good match, then you could find your­self in the rel­e­ga­tion zone. Right now there’s Cesena, Bologna, and Bari in the bot­tom three of the table, but I expect those three teams to sur­vive this sea­son. So who will go down? Well I think that this sea­son Lecce, Bres­cia, and Parma will go down, but that’s just my opin­ion. So please share your opin­ion on who you think will be play­ing in the Serie B next sea­son by com­ment­ing below!

4. and 5. Cas­sano will remain at Sam­p­do­ria who grab a win with­out him

I’ve decided to unify my fourth and fifth things to note about Serie A, mainly because they both include Sam­p­do­ria and Cas­sano. A cou­ple of days ago Cas­sano decided not to attend an awards cer­e­mony that the Sam­p­do­ria pres­i­dent Ric­cardo Gar­rone had asked the player to attend. After this event, there was a heated exchange between the player and pres­i­dent which opened up a can of rumors regard­ing a pos­si­ble move for Cas­sano to Juven­tus, Inter Milan, and maybe even Chelsea. But now the storm has died down, Cas­sano said sorry to the pres­i­dent with this statement,

I’m sorry for what hap­pened, and I’ve already said sorry to Mr. Gar­rone, which respect and like very much, in the pres­ence of my team­mates. To my team­mates I wish them good luck for the game against Cesena. I read that the sit­u­a­tion would be con­nected with spec­u­la­tions about the mar­ket, but I reaf­firm that, always that there’s the pos­si­bil­ity, it’s my solid inten­tion to remain with Sampdoria.

So it seems like every­body is happy even if Cas­sano didn’t play in Sampdoria’s 1–0 win away against Cesena. And Sam­p­do­ria suf­fered with­out Anto­nio, Wal­ter Mazzarri’s side could only find a win­ner in the 93rd minute of the match, with Giampaolo Pazz­ini tap­ping in Marilungo’s low ball across the box.

While I wanted Cas­sano to move away from Sam­p­do­ria, to a big­ger club where he would be sur­rounded by world class play­ers, it isn’t all that bad that he has remained in Genoa. Hope­fully he’ll con­tinue to play for Sam­p­do­ria, and play well enough to get into the Ital­ian national team. With Balotelli’s return from injury, I can’t wait to see the two pair up under the guid­ance of Pran­delli as Italy tries to qual­ify for the Euro­pean Cham­pi­onships of 2012.

What are your thoughts regard­ing this weekend’s Serie A action? Share your com­ments below!

Tagged as: Adrian Mutu, Balotelli, Bari, Cassano, Catania, Fiorentina, Garrone, Relegation, Sampdoria, Serie A, Serie B