No surprises on Thursday evening: as per pre-match expectations, favorites Lazio earned their ticket for the Coppa Italia semi-finals, beating Torino at the end of a multi-faceted 90 minutes. Indeed, the Biancocelesti were once again the stars of “a tale of two halves”, a cliché-phrase in the world of sports news, but one which describes very accurately what transpired at the Stadio Olimpico of Rome yesterday.
Simply put, Delio Rossi’s team used the two sets of 45 minutes to make a perfect recital of their current season: weaknesses on one side (difficulties in playmaking and lack of concentration at the back), strengths on the other (lethal short-passing & counterattacking abilities). And unfortunately for relegation-battlers Torino (who until half-time had virtually played the perfect game), one of those sets proved to be fatal.
Coming back strong from the Summer break, Italy was involved in some mid-week Serie A action Wednesday. Here are the results and summaries for matchday 4. Full Video Highlightshere.
Note: Sorry for the tardy update and the lack of match reports this time. My University Intramurals job took a big load of my time this week.
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Substitute Julio Ricardo Cruz scored to give Inter Milan a hard-fought 1-0 win over newly promoted Lecce on Wednesday to take over sole possession of the Serie A lead. With four forwards playing, Cruz took a headed pass from Zlatan Ibrahimovic to hit the target with a low shot in the 79th minute at the San Siro. Ibrahimovic hit the crossbar in the 26th for the three-time defending champion. Juventus was held to a 1-1 draw by Catania and AC Milan beat Reggina 2-1 for its second straight win.
Inter leads with 10 points, followed by Lazio and Atalanta with nine each. Napoli, which beat Palermo 2-1, and Juventus are next with eight points apiece. Amauri scored his third goal in three games for Juventus in the 16th minute but Gianvito Plasmati, who also scored against Inter earlier this season, equalized in the 68th for Catania. Alexandre Pato scored the winner for Milan after Bernardo Corradi had equalized for Reggina. Marco Borriello had scored first for the Rossoneri, who face Inter in the Milan derby Sunday.
Diego Milito joined Lazio’s Mauro Zarate atop the league scoring chart with his third and fourth goals in Genoa‘s 3-1 win over 10-man AS Roma, which has only one win through four rounds. Stefano Mauri, Goran Pandev and Sebastiano Siviglia scored to give Lazio a 3-0 win over Fiorentina, and Sergio Floccari’s goal led Atalanta to a 1-0 victory over last-place Cagliari. In the remaining three matches, Bologna overcame Udinese with an away score of 3-0, while Chievo-Torino (1-1) and Siena-Sampdoria (0-0) ended in draws.
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GOALS of the WEEK
Now see… we had an awesome batch of goals last week-end (and I mean some really really good stuff), so because of that, seems that the football Gods had to compensate on Wednesday.
Very ordinary stuff… in fact, just a Top 3 selection this time. (yeah… that bad!) .
And the winner is… Antonio Floro Flores. Definitely not mind-blowing stuff here… but a nice dribbling execution and cool finish. I couldn’t have, in good conscience, given the award to a bicycle kick 1 yard from the line right? .
GOALS of the WEEK
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