With the principal title contenders all playing each other this weekend in Serie A, James Horncastle gets you up to speed on the Derby della Madonnina, Juventus–Napoli and the protests in Rome that followed Daniele De Rossi’s dismissal…
Milan beat the streak
Sat behind Zlatan Ibrahimovic at San Siro was fellow Swede and guest of AC Milan, Mondo Duplantis. The gold-medal winning, serial world record breaking pole vaulter has made clearing a high bar look easy throughout his career. Over the last two years Inter have raised it in Serie A, far out of reach of rivals Milan. The holders went into Sunday’s Derby della Madonnina on the back of six consecutive wins in this fixture, including a Champions League semi-final and a game that clinched both the Scudetto and a second star.
Surprisingly Milan rose to the occasion and hit new heights under Paulo Fonseca.
Amid scrutiny of his position, Fonseca daringly started Tammy Abraham and Alvaro Morata in a 4-4-2. He was prepared to go down fighting if losing this game meant losing his job. It paid off. Christian Pulisic, the first American to score in the Madonnina, played angry and found the net for a fourth consecutive game for club and country. Rather than capitulate when Inter equalised as they did against Liverpool in midweek, Milan came out for the second half and put in their best, most determined performance of the season. That goalkeeper Yann Sommer was Inter’s best player said it all. He kept his team in the game with fine saves from Rafa Leao and Tammy Abraham but could do nothing to stop Matteo Gabbia from heading in a free-kick placed perfectly in front of him by the superb Tijjani Reijnders.
Aside from winning the Scudetto and overhauling the playing style, Fonseca was hired to reverse the trend in this fixture. While Inter at times looked jaded after their acclaimed exertions away to Man City in midweek, Milan deserved their win, which couldn’t always be said of recent famous victories in this fixture such as when Olivier Giroud famously turned and launched a comeback against the run of play in 2022.
Framed as in crisis on the eve of the game, Milan are now level on eight points with Inter. The hope, as far as Milanisti are concerned, is this win marks the belated beginning of something and that they follow Mondo’s leap in going higher and higher for the rest of the season.
Milan finally have lift off.
Is Motta just Allegri in disguise?
The Juventus coach has taken his jacket off in the heat of the moment. He has uttered the phrase: “Football is a simple game.” His team has not conceded a goal in Serie A since the end of last season. In his press conferences one half expects Thiago Motta to reach across his face and pull off one of those Mission Impossible-style prosthetics to reveal his grinning predecessor Max Allegri. Saturday’s 0-0 against Napoli at the Allianz Stadium was Juventus’ third goalless draw in a row in the league. You have to go back to 1992 and Giovanni Trapattoni’s second spell at the club to find the last time that happened.
While Juventus did open the season in a mid-block in order to counter on newly promoted Como, the stylistic differences between Motta’s team and the Allegri and Trap vintages are notable. Juventus defend by keeping the ball rather than digging in and putting bodies on the line inside their own penalty area. Napoli, Roma, and Verona only managed one shot on target against them, Como zilch. But the team has yet to click offensively. The scoreboard demurs. After all, Juventus put three past Como and Verona in their first couple of games and did the same against PSV upon their return to the Champions League.
If we analyse some of the goals, though, Samuel Mbangula and Andrea Cambiaso scored carbon copy low percentage worldies against Como, Tim Weah’s careened off the bottom of the bar and needed goal line technology to validate it, Dusan Vlahovic’s brace in Verona included a penalty, and Kenan Yildiz’s goal against PSV drew comparisons with the best of Alessandro Del Piero. It means Juventus are second from bottom for xG in Serie A. On the one hand, this is down to updating the attack to include the late signings of Teun Koopmeiners and Nico Gonzalez. On the other, it is a consequence of injuries like the one Weah suffered in the build-up to his goal against Como, and that sustained by Francisco Conceicao shortly after his cameo against Roma.
It is a work in progress. Juventus mustered only one shot on target against Napoli, who lost their goalkeeper Alex Meret to injury in-game and were experimenting with a back four. Vlahovic was withdrawn at half-time for Weah who did an impression of his father, George, by playing through the middle. Motta has repeatedly talked up Vlahovic, however, he sidelined Mbala N’Zola at Spezia and Marko Arnautovic at Bologna for less orthodox strikers. Joshua Zirkzee, for instance, often felt like a midfielder in a No.9 shirt. Benching Vlahovic, the highest paid player in Serie A, does not, for now, seem like an option.
These are still early days and Motta believes it is only a matter of time, more specifically the timing of runs and final balls in the final third, before Juventus hit their stride. While they figure that out, opponents in turn have to figure out how to score against them.
The new old Conte
While AC Milan’s senior advisor Zlatan Ibrahimovic continues to talk about “lions” and “kittens” (whenever he’s away, the club apparently shies away from its problems), Napoli this season have raised the question: can a leopard really change its spots? When Antonio Conte returned from his year out from the game, few people expected him to come back different and, in fairness, he did spend some of last month criticising the pace of the club’s transfer strategy and his players for “melting like snow on a sunny day.”
Imagine the surprise then when the coach most associated with three-at-the-back lined up Napoli in a 4-2-3-1 away to Juventus. Those of us who have followed the entirety of Conte’s coaching career delighted at the symmetry of this change.
Back in 2011 when Conte got the Juventus job, he was known as an integralista; someone who only knows how to play one way. That way wasn’t 3-5-2, though. At the time it was 4-2-4. Until Juventus played — who else? — Napoli and used the switch to come back from 2-0 and 3-1 down to draw 3-3. On Saturday, Conte hoped he might catch Motta by surprise with the change. By the same token he also feared that his defence might glitch. Instead Napoli gave nothing away and went closest to scoring themselves, forcing a couple of excellent saves from Juventus goalkeeper Michele Di Gregorio in an otherwise tight, tactical game.
To some it was a one-off. But Conte, who started out at Chelsea playing a back four, suggested it is here to stay. The late signings of Scott McTominay and Billy Gilmour and unexpected retention of Italy international Michael Folorunsho means he has more midfielders than he knows what to do with and it makes sense to drop a centre-back in order to incorporate an extra one of them. Diego Maradona’s No.10 shirt is retired at Napoli but McTominay played that role in Turin and while his passing was all too often imprecise, his potential to play off Romelu Lukaku and burst into the box showed what clear ideas Napoli have for the Scotland international.
Rome burns
When Roma’s owners, the Friedkin Group, fired Jose Mourinho in January the only way to keep the fans on side was to hire a coach the Curva Sud considered one of their own. But, as The Athletic acknowledged at the time, the short-term salve of appointing Daniele De Rossi carried with it the risk of losing the supporters forever if they ever did wrong by him. Initially hired as an interim, instead of waiting until the end of the season to judge De Rossi, the Friedkins seemed to let their emotions get the better of them as they announced the intention to make his appointment permanent after 1-0 wins in the derby and away to Milan in the Europa League quarter-final first leg in April.
Roma finished outside the five Champions League places but committed to De Rossi until 2027. They spent more than €100m on players, apparently in the face of their Financial Fair Play settlement agreement. Initial plans to recruit to play 4-3-3 had to be adapted when Paulo Dybala refused to go to Saudi Arabia. It resulted in a jumble. In the final days of the transfer window, Roma swapped Tammy Abraham for AC Milan’s Alexis Saelemaekers on loan. He’s now injured. They pulled out of deals for centre-backs Kevin Danso and Tiago Djalo on medical grounds and signed a midfielder, Manu Kone instead. Then, only when the window closed, did they cover the defence with the free transfers of Mats Hummels and Mario Hermoso.
As the September international break started, De Rossi finally knew what he had to work with, however, some of his new signings like Enzo Le Fee were already injured, Nicola Zalewski was all of a sudden frozen out of the squad after refusing to go to Galatasaray and the usage of Dybala was a problem amid reports that if he made 14 more appearances the club would be on the hook for an expensive renewal.
Still, De Rossi felt he would be given time.
After all, the club had given him a three-year deal and Roma, quite encouragingly had held Juventus to a draw at the Allianz Stadium, a place where they almost always lose. Upon the resumption of Serie A after the internationals, winless Roma drew again, this time at Genoa. A plausible claim for a penalty on Dybala had been turned down then Koni De Winter equalised deep into stoppage time. De Rossi swiftly and savagely got the sack.
In the context of one win in 13 games it made sense. The Friedkins dithered too long before getting rid of Mourinho and seemed to have learned from that experience. But in the context of an extravagant transfer spend and a three-year deal ratified only in June, De Rossi’s dismissal most certainly did not. The Friedkins didn’t fire just anyone. They fired a figlio di Roma or son of Rome. This was their Rubicon moment. Unlike with Mourinho’s exit, there was no face-saving alternative. De Rossi’s replacement, Ivan Juric, arguably deserved a crack at a big club but he will not experience the same grace as his predecessors. Threats and intimidation caused the heavily criticised CEO Lina Souloukou to quit on the day of Juric’s first game against league leaders Udinese. He found out about it on TV.
It was the first time in 58 games the Olimpico did not sell out and in a show of dissent the ultras spent the first half hour of the game outside the Sud’s gates. Those inside the ground sang De Rossi’s name. All the credit the Friedkins built up by bringing Mourinho to Rome, winning a trophy for the first time in 14 years, signing Dybala and then Lukaku has gone.
Sacking De Rossi might turn out to be the tipping point for them, similar in its acrimony to what the previous owners experienced when a bitter and disappointed Francesco Totti quit from his executive team role. Roma won big on Sunday (it was their first of the season) but winning the fans back will be far harder than beating Udinese. Vindication in changing coach means less in a bitter and vengeful environment.
The weekend’s results:
Cagliari 2-2 Empoli
Verona 2-3 Torino
Venezia 2-0 Genoa
Juventus 0-0 Napoli
Lecce 2-2 Parma
Fiorentina 2-1 Lazio
Monza 1-2 Bologna
Roma 3-0 Udinese
Inter 1-2 Milan
(Top photo: Jonathan Moscrop/Getty Images)
