Serie A matchday 10: Not the tactics, but the moments
What the 10th matchday of Serie A told us.
In a wonderful editorial published this week The NapoliteMassimiliano Gallo asked for a more complex analysis of football. Not the one who abandons tactics and takes refuge in the modules, but the one who questions itgame event. If you modify the old and wise saying “The ball is round”, you could almost say: “The moments of the ball are round”. Therefore fleeting, unpredictable, even absurd.
Take Napoli-Milan, 2-2. A beautiful game, certainly full of mistakes on both sides, but long live God! What competitive spirit, what intensity, above all the desire – Milan in the first half, Napoli in the second – to eat the ball and wrest it from the opponent’s control. To analyze a game like this with a telescope would be to destroy and distort its epic, and above all not to understand it in this game of matches there were hundreds.
We challenge everyone to believe that after the Rossoneri’s first half, which was perfect despite the almost ridiculous imperfection of the Neapolitan opponents, the game would have been reversed in the second half. But here are the changes from no more spalletti Rudi Garcia should completely change the inertia. Two amazing pieces in particular can be seen here: that of Politano and that of Raspadori, who opened Serie A’s season of free-kick goals with a fearsome shot from outside the penalty area – something that had never happened before after 10 days. In the end Napoli, who finished with ten men, were almost on the verge of victory with the usual amazing tightrope walker Kvaratskhelia, someone who can invent and break patterns but by no means follows them.
In an atmosphere of rapture, halfway between emotion and shock, Maradona thanked the players at the end of the game with applause that exceeded the all too narrow limits of good match. It’s true: Garcia is no Spalletti, but this Napoli is still very strong, and against the French coach who is so close to entering the Champions League and is definitely in the middle of the European Serie A race, it is maybe too strong just an exercise.
“What changed everything today beyond the tactical aspects was the reaction.”
Giacomo Raspadori at Sky Calcio Club
One would also blame Pioli for making some changes that certainly didn’t help his team withstand the blow and potentially win the game. But that’s the beauty of it: reading momentsa problem that can certainly be attributed to the coaches, but above all to the players on the pitch (even those who weigh down the pitch, like Giroud and Leao).
“I got angry because I still had so much to give. I am a man, not a robot: I have feelings.”
Olivier Giroud at Sky Calcio Club
Ask Ranieri to talk to you about plans, modules and tactical whims. What’s tactical about a comeback from 0:3 to 4:3 within twenty minutes? But there is much more, and it’s all football: there is the love of the Cagliaritans, who encouraged the team even after Brescianini’s goal at the start of the second half; There are the tears of Sir Claudio and those of Pavoletti, the immortal, after the wonderful double in the 92nd and 96th minutes. The same minute of the game in which Cambiaso, among others, engraved his name in the history of Juventus. Because we are convinced of it The Goals, another chapter of Allegri’s Cortomusismo, is one of crucial moments of the Juventus season – which is now aggressively focused on the championship.
However, what currently remains in the hands of Inter. The Nerazzurri forced a depleted but focused and credible Roma – at least in the defensive phase – to limit their field of action to no more than 50 meters from Rui Patricio’s goal – thereby denying Cristante a chance midway through the second half that could have changed everything when it comes to moments.
Inter deservedly won thanks to a goal from Marcus Thuram, on the day when his counterpart Lukaku was most expected. The former Gladbach player’s goal after a cross from Dimarco is worth a lot from a title perspective: What Inter have missed in the last two seasons, not due to tactical problems, plans and modules. No, but because I don’t know how to read the moments. It’s a question of the head and the heart, not geometry. And Eupalla always preferred feeling to reason.
