According to the Napoli coach, only victory counts? Same result for all the big teams this weekend, but Inter’s success in Rome is the one that is worth the most. Rocchi, we need uniformity
Journalist
October 21st – 07:48 – MILAN
Hot air. If Antonio Conte is right, according to whom only winning matters because the rest is (precisely) “hot air”, then no coach of the big teams has anything to worry about: Napoli and Inter, Juve and Milan all got their success, all by one to zero, and since last night they have occupied the top four positions in the table in this order. The fact that none of them were completely convincing – the one that achieved the most significant and convincing success was Inzaghi’s team, which advanced to the Olimpico against Roma – is obviously not worth that much: hot air, according to Conte . Yet, in perspective, the difficulties encountered by head poker have a meaning.
hard-fought victories
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After seeing Milan (ten men) suffer until the last second to beat Udinese at San Siro, and Juve only defeat Lazio (ten men) at the end amid the Biancocelesti’s protests, we witnessed two other hard-fought victories for 1-0, although this time away. It is understandable that Inter had problems overcoming Roma. The Nerazzurri started well, created opportunities, then suffered two slaps in a quarter of an hour: first the injury to Calhanoglu, the only irreplaceable player in Inzaghi’s band (yesterday Asllani wasn’t even there, but still the difference with the Turk it’s clear), then Acerbi’s knockout. At half an hour Inter had lost their technical leader and had already burned two substitution slots. This conditioned it, it is no coincidence that Roma emerged. But the Nerazzurri is a great, mature team that knows how to exploit the weaknesses and mistakes of its opponents. Zalewski and Celik made a double mess, Lautaro exploited it: the match was decided there. And while the excessive physical power and completeness achieved by Thuram continue to impress, a by no means negligible problem arises: Inzaghi had three out of six midfielders out at the Olimpico (also Zielinski as well as Calhanoglu and Asllani) plus Acerbi, he needs to recover them in hurry since the Champions League and especially Juve are coming.
scoring points counts
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Conte’s Napoli is extolling the hot air theory. They often find difficulties even against clearly inferior opponents (it had already happened against Como and even in Cagliari, although the final 4-0 might suggest the opposite), yet in the end they always win. And in the end – Conte dixit – only this matters, scoring points, because the rest is hot air. In this way, Napoli continues its run at the top of the table, with the prospect of being able to experience another favorable week: on Saturday it will host Lecce, who yesterday took six from Fiorentina, while Inter and Juve, second and third, will they will face each other, moreover after having played another round of the Champions League. The possibility of extending further up front is concrete, at least towards one of the two. It’s true that Napoli’s calendar will soon become very difficult (they will find Milan, Atalanta, Inter, Roma, Turin and Lazio all in a row between the end of November and the beginning of December), but arriving at this terrible cycle with such a good ranking conveys confidence, positivity , enthusiasm. Also because Napoli’s difficulties in playing can become a hymn to optimism: if they win now that they are not brilliant, what will they do when they also start to produce more convincing football, the one that Conte has shown so many times in his career?
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the case
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The referees continue to be a case: we left the championship amidst errors and controversies, after the break we find it in the same situation. This weekend too we saw it all: referees saved by the VAR and VAR not saving the referees, penalties called and different interpretations of the rules, cards distributed in an imaginative way. Some sensational episodes have remained in the eyes: the clear expulsion of Romagnoli which Sacchi did not see from the field; Douglas Luiz’s elbow to Patric underestimated by everyone, referee and VAR, before Juve’s goal; the foul suffered by Coco on the edge of the Torino area was transformed into a free kick for Cagliari (who took the lead thanks to that free kick). But there were many other less decisive decisions that were clearly wrong, they say, and in general there was an incomprehensible management of many matches, from Turin to Milan to Cagliari. Nobody expects perfection – even if with the help of the VAR we can expect it to come close – but the football people need to have certainties: uniformity of judgment has become essential.
