Serie A Fantasy Recap – Round Five

Standings implications: Roma managed to at least slow down Milan in the Monday night thriller. Napoli stayed perfect in the matches they actually played but they had to dig deep to sink a plucky Benenevento. Juventus lost some more ground as they could not get past Verona. Inter and Lazio both bounced back after multiple winless rounds, as the Nerazzurri patiently worked their way around Genoa’s defence, while the Biancocelesti bested Bologna. Sassuolo and Sampdoria are the surprises of the early season: the Neroverdi were again the comeback kids against Torino, but their rally stopped short this time, while the Blucerchiati handed Atalanta their second tough L in a row. Fiorentina held on two dear life this time in order to beat Udinese and return to winning ways. Cagliari defeated Crotone, keeping the opponents on the down low, while this time Spezia were on the wrong end of a two-goal comeback in Parma.

Confirmations: Zlatan Ibrahimovic stay on top of the scorers’ chart with his third brace of the season. Romelu Lukaku and Fabio Quagliarella keep producing as the Belgian powerhouse notched his fifth goal in as many Serie A matches, while the Italian veteran found the target for the for fourth straight game, but also missed a PK. Andrea Belotti stayed hot as well and he has already hit the net five times. Second goal in the campaign for two of the most decorated and popular strikers, Ciro Immobile and Duvan Zapata. Cagliari’s dynamica duo, Giovanni Simeone and Joao Pedro, made their presence felt once again in the same fixtures. Two paydirts in a row and three in the season for Filip Djuricic. Gaetano Castrovilli was faboulous against Udinese and moved to four goals in the year with a brace. Dejan Kulusevski came in and stole the show on Sunday night. Jordan Veretout was again clutch from the spot, while Edin Dzeko made the boxcore for the second tilt in a row.

Guess who is back: Luis Alberto smashed one home for the first time in 2020/2021. Lorenzo Insigne immediately delivered upon returning from injury, with a gorgeous strike nonetheless, while Andrea Petagna perfectly played the role of the super sub with a three-point goal. Stefano Okaka snapped out of his funk with two imposing headers. Karol Linetty and Sasa Lukic both put one past the goalie for the first time this season in the Sassuolo game, same achievement for Juraj Kucka with a late PK versus Spezia. Andrea Favilli surely made his limited minutes count.

Morten Thorsby and Jakub Jankto opened their seasonal tallies as Sampdoria keep cooking. Some expected contributors out of the fantasy middle class broke out in this round since Cagliari’s Riccardo Sottil, Crotone’s Junior Messias and Salvatore Molina, Spezia’s Kevin Agudelo, Alexis Saelemaekets and Benevento’s Roberto Insigne andall found the back of the net in the season.

Surprise scorers: Vlad Chiriches not only scored his first goal in four years, but did it in majestic fashion, with a stunning piledriver from distance right in the top corner. Danilo D’Ambrosio has instead already put his name in the stat-sheet twice. Lorenzo De Silvestri’s first goal with Bologna was not enough to concretely re-open the clash with Bologna. Charalampos Lykogiannis bagged an impressive lefty free kick. The other defenders hitting the next were Julian Chabot, Marash Kumbulla, Nikola Milenkovic and Riccardo Gagliolo, but that is not shocking news in the last two cases.

Flops of the round: Atalanta’s offense was again paltry for their usually high standards.

Clutch goal: Francesco Caputo was held in check for most of the contest on Friday night, but he found a sliver of room in the box and outsmarted an defender for a late header that made it three-all versus Torino.

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