The seventh round of the Italian league competition has finished and now, all teams will have time to prepare themselves for the next fixture because next week there will be an international break. However, lots of players will play with their national teams, so it won’t be a great rest for them. There have been also so much changes in this table during this round, so let’s see in which position are Italian teams after this seventh round.
Two Saturday fixtures to start
Udinese and Sampdoria were the first teams to play in this weekly fixture. This match can be called “Penalty kick match”, because there were three goals scored by Udinese with a penalty kick: goals by De Paul in the 27th minute, López in the 85th minute and Fofana in the 90th minute. The match was conditioned by the referee, because Barreto saw a red card in the first half and Sampdoria played the rest of the fixture with one player less, so it was not so difficult for Udinese to get the three points. The final result was 4-0.
In the other Saturday battle, it was shown that Genoa hasn’t had a great start: they needed to get at least one point from their match against Bologna, but they didn’t scored in any of their 18 shots (7 shots on target and 9 shots off target). Donadoni squad knew that Genoa needed to win, so they prepared a great strategy and they finally could win thanks to a Rodrigo Palacio goal in the 73rd minute. Obviously, Juric was not happy with that result and they will have to improve their strategy if they want to remain in the competition.
Not so many changes in the table
Sunday league fixtures started in San Paolo: Napoli and Cagliari were facing each other and Napoli wanted to win to continue being at the top. With this situation, Cagliari had no chance to get a point from the match: Hamsik scored in the first minutes and then Mertens and Koulibaly made 3-0 the final score of the match. Bets predicted an easy match for Napoli (87% was their win probability rating) and they said the truth, because Cagliari didn’t make any shot on target during the match.
Another “easy” match was the one between Benevento and Inter. Before the battle, experts said that Inter would score more than three goals and its victory would be easy, but Benevento did a great match and, after two goals from Brozovic, D’Alessandro scored and made things more difficult for Spalletti squad. However, a draw or a victory for Benevento was like an impossible result and finally the match ended 1-2 for Inter. Baroni squad continues having 0 points and their fans are angry with them.
Stadio Marc’Antonio Bentegodi had one of the roughest fixtures of the week: Chievo vs. Fiorentina. At first sight, people can say that Fiorentina has a better squad, but Chievo did a better strategy and made a comeback: Giovanni Simeone scored first for Fiorentina, but then, Lucas Castro scored two goals, giving to Chievo the three points from the match. The final result was 2-1 and Rolando squad is, in the ninth position, four points ahead from Fiorentina, which is in the 12th position.
One leader remaining
In Stadio Olimpico, Lazio got a great score from their match against Sassuolo Calcio: Bucchi squad scored first from the penalty kick, but then, Inzaghi squad scored six goals and finished the battle with three points (goals from Luis Alberto x2, De Vrij, Parolo x2 and Immobile). In another hand, there were two draws: the one between SPAL and Crotone (1-1 with goals from Paloschi for SPAL and Simy for Crotone) and the one between Torino and Hellas Verona, which was a good match for Torino until the end, when, in the last two minutes, Kean and Pazzini scored for Hellas Verona and made the draw. Mihajlovic was very angry with that.
The outstanding match of Serie A this week was the battle between Milan and Roma at San Siro. The three points were for Roma, which waited for their opportunities and Dzeko and Florenzi scored the only two goals of the fixture. Now, Milan is out of Europa League positions. Finally, the last match between Atalanta and Juventus finished with an unexpected result: Allegri squad made an advantage of two goals in the first half but then, Caldara and Cristante scored for Atalanta and Juventus could only get one point. With this result, Napoli becomes the only leader of the Serie A TIM.