It is only the second round of Serie A, but the Italian league continues to offer one surprise after another, with top teams falling and losing points in matches in which they were expected to win easily. Roma, Atalanta and Lazio lost, Juventus drew against Bologna amidst a thousand controversies: the race for the Scudetto for some teams is already a struggle! Let’s see what happened…
SURPRISE OF THE WEEK – FROSINONE BEAT ATALANTA
Surprisingly, but deservedly so, Frosinone beat Atalanta and found their first three points in Serie A at only the second available opportunity. The team coached by Eusebio Di Francesco had all their talent on display, putting the Bergamaschi on the ropes with a solid and convincing performance.
Frosinone took the lead first with Abdou Harroui, who, after scoring at Napoli with a penalty, found a nice wriggle driving centrally and sent the ball into the net, then doubled it with Ilario Monterisi, a central defender who did a long apprenticeship before arriving in Italy’s top competition.
Then Duvan Zapata found a nice goal – but Atalanta had to surrender to Frosinone, which played the whole match with aggressiveness and personality, leading the game against a stronger and more experienced opponent.
Di Francesco came from a bad past, but the management of the Ciociari bought players he liked and gave him confidence, and now it shows. Certainly the game won by Frosinone was the surprise of the week, despite the fact that there were defeats for Lazio and Roma over the round.
PLAYER OF THE WEEK – DUSAN VLAHOVIC
He has been on the market all summer, on the list of players for sale, with Max Allegri interested in a swap with Chelsea for Romelu Lukaku, who instead will be a new Roma player.
Dusan Vlahovic remains in Turin and has already found his second goal of the season – this time against Bologna. First the penalty scored in the first game, then a beautiful, precise and venomous header that came directly from a corner, impossible for Lukasz Skorupski to get there. Juventus didn’t take any striker in this market session, at least for the moment, having the Serbian, Arek Milik, Moise Kean, Fede Chiesa, but especially with this Vlahovic, much more at the centre of the game than last season, the choice seems to have been the right one.
In fact, the Serbian would have scored two goals in the second half, but one was disallowed because one of his teammates was offside. Finally, Dusan is making the big leap and becoming a leader on the pitch for Juventus, having driven Fiorentina and having deserved the move to the Bianconeri. This is the right way forward for Vlahovic, who stayed in Turin almost by chance, but is now already an absolute protagonist.
TEAM OF THE WEEK – GENOA
After the ugly defeat against Fiorentina it was hard to imagine or expect a Genoa victory at Lazio’s home, instead Alberto Gilardino prepared the match against Maurizio Sarri in the best possible way and so the three points came.
Genoa would dominate the game, controlling the pace of the match, thanks in part to the talent of players like new arrival Ruslan Malinovskyi, before going to Marseille one of the highest-performing players in the league, of Albert Gudmundsson, who was practically uncatchable for Lazio defenders and even Matteo Retegui.
The bomber of the Italian national team was the matchwinner for Genoa, with a sharp header to take advantage of Ivan Provedel’s short and weak spilled save after the shot from new signing Malinovskyi.
Sarri failed to pick up the game even by sending in the new signings, with Taty Castellanos still making himself dangerous in some ways. Lazio’s performance was disappointing, booed by their fans at the end of the game, with the meager haul of 0 points in two games. Too little for Lazio, no doubt, but Genoa deserved this victory and deserved the three points.
With so many squad flaws, but a team that comes up with a trident of Malinovskyi, Gudmundsson, and Retegui, management shows that it wants to avoid Serie B at all costs. And this is the right way to go.
INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE OF THE WEEK – ANDREA COLPANI
The surprise star of the weekend: Colpani was the MVP of the match against Empoli scoring two goals and with an outstanding performance.
Everyone expected great things from Gianluca Caprari, from Dany Mota, from Matteo Pessina, from the other high level players on Monza’s roster, but instead it was the midfielder born in 1999 who decided the match and made the difference: first with a splendid goal, a shot from the distance that ended under the crossbar, then with a beautiful header after a run into the centre of the area.
Two great goals for a midfielder who is already a candidate for the role of protagonist at Monza, but not only: the eyes of the big Serie A teams are already on him.
