Serie A Day 1 Recap

Last week was Day 1 of Serie A 2014-2015.

Finally scandals and gossips left room for football played on a pitch.

The cards were on the table for a great opportunity of change after the World Cup fiasco, but if the call of Antonio Conte as national coach bursts optimism and interest, the one of Mr. Tavecchio, under trial for racist comments, as president of the federation leaves the impression that they’re back to where they tried running from.

This is supposed to be “year one” for a movement stuck too long in its own bad habits and therefore expectations are not too high due also to the poor transfer market, that generally affected all teams with few exceptions.

Serie A Day 1 Recap

Unlike previous seasons, there were no surprises, all the big teams won, some dominated the opponent team like Juventus, AS Roma and in part AC Milan, some other struggled a bit, like Napoli.

The “bianconeri” in particular demonstrated, that even after the coach change and 3 years of victory in a row are still hungry and committed to top the league. Despite the 1-0 victory, they had plenty of chances to add up goals and newcomers like Coman seem already integrated in a well oiled scoring machine. The “giallorossi” from the capital impressed as well for fitness and intensity showing off some beatiful passing game. The 2-0 over Fiorentina gives them confidence and might sound like a statement, that this year will be a 2 sides race for the title.

But the beauty of this sport is that nothing is written until it happens, and other contenders might appear suddenly and mercilessly. One of them might well be Napoli despite the poor transfer market aimed to keep fiancial balance in order, therefore sparkling feelings of unhappines among the fans. The away victory in Genoa against the “rossoblu” for 2-1 unraveling at min.95′ uncovered the usual defensive issues, on the other hand showed character and team effort. Rafa Benitez has to be trusted.

AC Milan are a new team as well, appointing former player and Milan’s icon Filippo Inzaghi as coach, it could turn out to be a genious move, believing that his enthusiams and commitment will fill the gap left by the lack of experience, having been in charge only of the youth team before. This policy already paid off in the game against Lazio won for 3-1.

Despite the brilliant pre-season Inter Milan got stuck to a 0-0 in Turin against Toro that could have gone either way. Mazzarri has some work to do overall in making the players understand his tactics and movements. Wingers didn’t perform the way one would expect in a 3-5-2.

Fiorentina and Lazio will reset the clock and try a better start next week against more affordable opponents like Genoa and Cesena. Mention of honor for the newly promoted “bianconeri” in their victory for 1-0 over Parma showing a lot of enthusiasm.
Udinese, led by the immortal Antonio Di Natale, found and easy victory over the other newcomer Empoli and if the Friuli stadium is an open construction site, the team seems already to have mastered the ideas of new coach Stramaccioni.

Tie games for all the other teams.

This Weekend will be interesting to see how leading clubs confirm their good performances and how the rest of the ranking responds to that.

Stay tuned.