It was a disappointing weekend for some of Italy’s biggest teams on matchday 30 of the Serie A campaign.
Napoli, AC Milan and Inter Milan – all perhaps with an eye on the second-leg of their Champions League quarter-finals this week – all dropped points.
Rivals Roma and Lazio though boosted their hopes of Champions League qualification with 3-0 victories over Udinese and Spezia, respectively.
Juventus’ top-four hopes took a significant blow after their shock 1-0 defeat away at Sassuolo on Sunday.
Mail Sport’s Alvise Cagnazzo has dissected the weekend’s action and taken a closer look at 10 things we learned from the Italian top flight.
Napoli were one of several big teams in the Serie A to drop points at the weekend
Sarri-ball has been reborn
Sarri-ball has been reborn and he has perfected his way of playing football in Lazio.
Maurizio Sarri, in his third Italian experience with clubs, expected to be near the top end of the league and he has managed to improve the performance standards of his teams.
The 3-0 victory against Spezia was a technical and tactical masterpiece that gives back to Sarri the merit of having played a sparkling brand of football capable of combining entertainment and results.
Sarri gets through more than two packs of cigarettes a day but manages to see the match better than the others despite the cloud of smoke in front of his eyes.
Lazio play magnificent football – inferior only to that of Luciano Spalletti’s Napoli – and are now aiming to end the season with a top-four finish.
Even with only Ciro Immobile in attack, Lazio have managed to score 49 goals, with only 20 goals conceded.
The Sarri-ball evolution is linked to greater attention in defence and great dynamism in attack.
Maurizio Sarri is enjoying a great season with Lazio, who are currently second in Serie A
Thiago Motta is impressing
Thiago Motta is having his best season since he has been a coach. His Bologna is a splendid team who was capable of surprising AC Milan in less than one minute thanks to Nicola Sansone’s goal.
The beauty of express football seems to be the same as the team with Renzo Ulivieri on the bench in the early years of Serie A.
Musa Barrow can punish defences, Lewis Ferguson and Stefan Posch look like top players who could reach at least 200 games in Serie A, and the whole team defends and attacks with great balance and precision.
Playing against AC Milan is always a difficult exercise because despite the high turnover in Stefano Pioli’s team, the Rossoneri players have an excellent pedigree.
Divock Origi, Charles De Ketelaere and Aster Vranckx are not playing in excellent physical shape but they have international experience and technical skills which should pose a danger.
With these solid performances, Bologna can become an increasingly competitive team, especially if they manage not lose their best players on the market.
Scotsman Lewis Ferguson (right) has impressed at Serie A side Bologna this season
Belgian core is failing at AC Milan
For the first time in Serie A, a team fielded more than two Belgian-born players in a Serie A match as Alexis Saelemaekers, Vranckx, De Ketelaere and Origi lined up for AC Milan.
All four were poor and provide a perfect example of the market mistakes made by Paolo Maldini in the summer transfer window.
Vranckx is only the second player born after January 1, 2002, to play a Serie A match as a starter for AC Milan, after Lorenzo Colombo in October 2020, but he needs much more time to be able to impose himself on the side.
The most negative aspect, considering the great generosity of the marathon runner Saelemakers, is represented by the insufficient performance of De Ketelaere and Origi – two very expensive players who weighed down the club’s economic accounts by putting together a series of disastrous performances.
De Ketelaere played 26 matches without managing to score a single goal and Origi made 22 appearances while scoring only twice.
The performance against Bologna was probably the worst of the former Liverpool star for AC Milan, who was never a threat in the Bologna penalty area.
At the end of the year, albeit for different reasons, they could all leave Milan, which would be another damning indictment of their transfer activity.
Former Liverpool cult hero Divock Origi (left) had his worst display since joining AC Milan in the defeat to Bologna
Monza are the new Cindarella story
Monza is the new Cinderella of Italian football and follows the legacy of Piacenza, Chievo Verona, Vicenza and Sassuolo.
Up until 12 months ago players like Michele Di Gregorio, Patrick Ciurria, Andrea Colpani and Dany Motha watched Serie A on television. But on matchday 30 of this Serie A campaign they condemned Inter to their 11th league defeat this season.
Where can this Monza finish? Perhaps in the upper-half of the table and, with some luck, maybe in the European places.
The organisational system coined by Silvio Berlusconi continues to amaze and give great satisfaction to the team’s fans who had never played on such important stages, obtaining prestigious victories against established Serie A teams.
Matteo Pessina is the shining beacon of a team that initially struggled but is now showing that smaller teams can cut it with the best.
Adriano Galliani and Berlusconi are great managers capable of building winning teams and their strength has always been that of knowing how to choose the right men at the right time.
Raffaele Palladino was a happy intuition from Berlusconi, while the purchase of Pessina was strongly desired by Galliani like the arrival of Nicolo Rovella on loan from Juventus.
The Brianza team is strong and sufficiently prepared to be able to dream of participating in the UEFA Conference League next season.
Monza have dreams of qualifying for Europe after their shock victory over Inter Milan
Inter Milan’s risk could prove costly
Inter Milan no longer knows how to win and the three consecutive defeats at the ‘Meazza’ stadium are the clear sign of a serious problem in the dressing room.
Romelu Lukaku is the highest paid striker in Serie A but he is also the striker with the worst statistical ratio between goals and appearances: 18 appearances and just three goals are too few to allow any kind of positive judgment on the Belgian who will return to Chelsea in the summer.,
Inter sinks, and with it sink the former top players who today are no longer able to be decisive like Joaquin Correa, Stefan de Vrij and Denzel Dumfries.
It seems impossible but Lukaku, Lautaro Martinez, Edin Dzeko and Correa have not been able to score even one goal in the last three games played at home and doubts have emerged over Simone Inzaghi’s ability to stimulate their attacking game.
The feeling is that the team has neglected their domestic duties by concentrating 100% of their efforts on the Champions League. A calculated risk that seriously threatens to make Inzaghi’s season disastrous.
Struggling Inter Milan appear to be putting 100% of their focus into the Champions League
Fagioli’s mistake symptomatic of struggling Juve
No shots on goal for 70 minutes, no dangerous action despite the presence of Arkadiusz Milik and Dusan Vlahovic in attack from the first minute.
Not being able to win against an impotent Sassuolo, without their captain Domenico Berardi, is a serious mistake that risks further compromising Juventus’ progress in the league.
Nicolo Fagioli made a huge mistake that brings Juventus to their knees and burst into tears on the bench: this is the photograph of an unfortunate, naive and powerless team that has a coach who is unable to get the team to change gears in times of difficulty.
Speaking to DAZN after the game, Massimiliano Allegri defended Fagioli as he said: ‘He is not guilty of the defeat. We had the possibility of taking 11 points and nine away from the Milanese, it was an important step for the championship but we played the wrong game.’
Words that suggest that Allegri has fully understood the player’s moment of emotional difficulty and is constantly trying to protect him from criticism.
In the last 40 days, however, a different type of player will be needed than the one sunk under the sun of the ‘Mapei Stadium’ and Fagioli will have to return to being decisive to help Juventus return to Europe.
Where has Vlahovic gone?
Dusan Vlahovic is an unrecognisable player who is having his worst season in his career.
The star of the Serbian national team is not in tune with Allegri and with his tactical schemes: he appears nervous, imprecise in the opponent’s penalty area and all too nervous in dialogue with teammates.
He wastes too much time in decisive choices and has suffered in front of goal He has not yet reached 10 goals in Serie A and has never scored in big matches with Juventus.
He seems to run without organisation, he doesn’t know what to do and is never thrown vertically by the central midfielders of the Juventus team.
Against Sassuolo he was a ghost. He never managed a shot on goal and missed yet another opportunity to break his long drought. There seems to be no remedy for the poor performance of this season, which could sensationally be his last with Juventus.
His future will be revealed in June but for now there is an obligation to think only of the ending to this season.
Dusan Vlahovic has struggled at Juventus and could be moved on in the summer window
Edoardo Bove can become the new star of Roma
Edoardo Bove is a young player born in 2002 who can become the new star of Roma.
His 22 appearances are an excellent start for a polite and willing player who played an excellent game against Udinese, demonstrating how the Jose Mourinho method can become a gold mine for Roma.
He is a highly dynamic midfielder who is part of the Italian Under 21 team and Mourinho hopes to lead him to Roberto Mancini’s senior side.
After discovering Nicolo Zalewski, Mourinho decided to bet strongly on Bove in the hope of delivering a captain of the future to Roma.
From 2021 he was promoted to the first team and studied the perfect tactical movements behind Lorenzo Pellegrini to become a regular in Rome.
Bove can be deployed as a midfielder and has stated several times that he wants to become Daniele De Rossi’s heir in Roma’s engine room.
Jose Mourinho hopes that he has found a future captain of Roma in Edoardo Bove
Di Gregorio proves his worth
Michele Di Gregorio confirmed himself as one of the best goalkeepers in Italian football as against Inter Milan, his performance was exceptional.
Gregorio grew up in the Nerazzurri youth team, passing through Renate, Novara and Pordenone, up to Monza. With Silvio Berlusconi’s company he obtained promotion to Serie A, historic for the Brianza club and the player immediately demonstrated such reliability as to convince Palladino to deploy him as a starter.
Cragno has been surpassed in the hierarchies since the first day of his adventure in Brianza and today Di Gregorio also seems ready to be summoned to Roberto Mancini’s Italy. He is young, he is strong and knows how to handle psychological pressure very well. Strong in intuition, Di Gregorio governs the defense and above all has a lot of quality in middle of pitch.
Michele Di Gregorio is proving himself to be one of the top keepers in the Serie A at Monza
Lecce are playing themselves into trouble
Serie A is no longer a solid certainty but is starting to become an unknown factor for Lecce.
The fable of the team full of young and naive players seems to have broken the spell of positive results and the draw against Sampdoria has exposed all the personality problems of a team that has only Samuel Umtiti as a leader in the squad.
A draw against a team destined to be relegated is synonymous with a strong lack of psychological strength and now Lecce fight against arithmetic by observing the results of the other opponents.
Lecce today has 28 points, 5 more than Verona third from bottom but losing 2 fundamental points against Sampdoria has fueled the protest of the fans who have heavily contested the team.
The fans accuse Lecce of having given up playing against Sampdoria, giving up possession of the ball to their opponents and reducing their game strategy to limiting themselves to counter-attacks.
According to Serie A data report, Marco Baroni’s team made 310 passes, while Dejan Stankovic’s team completed 465 passes: a statistic that reveals Lecce’s total lack of aggressiveness and personality.
On these bad statistics, the club will have to work with a lot of discipline and will have to try to keep the distances from Spezia and Verona unchanged.
Samuel Umtiti is one of Lecce’s only leaders in the team, who are playing themselves into trouble