Results: Roma and Juventus shared the spoils in an entertaining fixture to cap off the Sunday slate. Napoli demolished Genoa, Milan easily got past Crotone, while Verona nipped Udinese to stay perfect in the season. Inter furiously rallied back late against Fiorentina, while Lazio breezed past Cagliari and Atalanta toyed with Torino, so the three ‘top four’ teams that had their opener delayed were all successful. Among the newly promoted teams, Benevento got off to a brilliant start as they mounted a glorious comeback against Sampdoria, tough sledding instead for Spezia, which run into an in-form Sassuolo. Bologna trounced Parma on Monday night.
Confirmations: Cristiano Ronaldo is the only one with three goals after two games. Ciro Immobile immediately answered the bell and put away the Cagliari game in the second half. Lautaro Martinez smashed one through and propitiated an own goal, while Romelu Lukaku missed a pair of sitters but did manage to tap a pivotal one home. Gaetano Castrovilli and Dries Mertens netted his second in a row, while Christian Kouame and Federico Chiesa opened their season tally. Everybody ate up front for Napoli: Hirving Lozano had his best game in Italy and assembled a brace, Piotr Zielinski, Elijf Elmas and Matteo Politano also joined the party. Jordan Veretout almost downed Juventus on his one with a penalty kick and a precise finish at the end of a counter.
Despite a rough day for Torino, Andrea Belotti bagged his first two goals with shrewd finishes, while two of the Bergamaschi’s aces hit the net in this round, Luis Muriel and Alejandro Gomez, with equally gorgeous strikes.Sassuolo feasted over Spezia and all their attackers du jour hit the net: Filip Djuricic, Domenico Berardi, Gregoire Defrel and Francesco Caputo, even if it took the veteran three attempts because of pesky VARs. Andrej Galabinov had temporarily tied that match. Fabio Quagliarella nudged one though versus Benevento. Frank Kessie converted a PK and Brahim Diaz notched his first goal in Italy. Roberto Soriano posted almost half the goals he had in all of last season in one night and the other Bologna attackers to make the stat-sheet were Andreas Skov Olsen and Rodrigo Palacio.
Guess who is back: Andrea Favilli had yet to knock one on goal in Serie A and fully took advantage of Samuel Di Carmine’s injury. Same feet with Hernani, who often fired away last season but to no avail.
Surprise scorers: even if Atalanta had the most prolific attack in 2019/2020, Hans Hateboer and Marten De Roon had not really chipped in, but they both put their name in the stat-sheet on Saturday. Same thing for Manuel Lazzari, who is an integral part of Lazio’s offense but had failed to score in the past season: he remedied that in their first match in 2020/21. It was a great day for defenders in Sampdoria-Benevento, as Omar Colley and Gaetano Letizia registered their first ever Serie A goal, while Luca Caldirola bagged two while he was at it.
Flops of the round: Genoa fell apart defensively and gift-wrapped few goals to Napoli. Sampdoria and Spezia faltered in the second half, as the Blucerchiati threw away a two-nothing lead and the Aquilotti’s leakiness in the back became appalling.
Clutch goal: it is no longer particularly surprising for Danilo D’Ambrosio to find the target even if he’s playing centre-back, but in this case he delivered at the most opportune time to cap off Inter’s comeback.
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