Since earning promotion to Serie A at the end of last season, Venezia FC has been something of a cult favorite in world football. A hidden gem located in Venice, the club attracted fans stateside by signing two Americans and attracted fans worldwide by releasing four stunning Venezia FC kits.
Weston McKennie scored for a second straight match, but a man who is in even finer goal scoring form struck twice as Juventus lost yet again, this time 2-1 to Hellas Verona on Saturday.
Giovanni Simeone — son of Atlético Madrid manager Diego — followed up his four-goal performance against Lazio on Sunday by scoring twice against Juve in the first 15 minutes on Saturday. The first was a simple tap-in; his second was an absolute worldie that proved to be the match winner.
Christian Eriksen is not permitted to play in Italy this season as a result of the cardiac arrest he suffered at Euro 2020, his club Inter Milan said in a statement, with the Serie A champions open to letting the Danish midfielder leave.
Eriksen suffered the on-field cardiac arrest during his country's opening game of the tournament in June against Finland and received life-saving treatment on the pitch.
It's been 15 years since news of Italy's major match-fixing scandal shocked the footballing world. Calciopoli, as the scandal became known, involved five Serie A sides (namely Juventus) paying off anyone and everyone to influence things like refereeing selections and calls made on the field.
Gianluigi Buffon, Giorgio Chiellini and Zlatan Ibrahimovic — members of Juventus at the time and all still in Serie A — will certainly remember those dark days of Italian football, as well as the subsequent match-fixing scandal that came to light in 2011.
Since losing Cristiano Ronaldo in the offseason, Juventus has struggled to replace the Portuguese star’s impressive goal haul. Ronaldo had an incredible ability to leap for headed goals in his three seasons with the Bianconeri. But this Weston McKennie goal vs Sassuolo showed the Old Lady still has a pretty good option when lobbing balls into the box. Unfortunately for the American, the rest of his team wasn’t up to his level on Wednesday.
Last week, Arsène Wenger — now FIFA’s Chief of Global Football Development — told a refereeing convention in France that refs should give post-match press conferences.
“It would be a good way to avoid controversy and shut them down before they became a public debate,” Wenger said. “We would have to get the support of referees, and I don’t know what kind of state of mind they’re in after games to be able to give an opinion.”
Patrice Evra is full of life and love at 40 years old. The Instagram page for the former French defender with nearly 400 appearances for Manchester United is full of fun, joy and the left back’s favorite phrase: “I love this game.” A recent post saw him joking about his poo to his wife and tennis star Novak Djokovic.
Fort Worth native Bryan Reynolds made his first career start for AS Roma on Thursday. It wasn’t a match to remember.
Reynolds, a right back who moved to Italy from FC Dallas over the summer, was part of the worst defensive performance in José Mourinho’s 1,008-match career in a stunning 6-1 defeat to Bodø/Glimt in the Europa Conference League. Never before had Mourinho, a man often accused of playing boring, defensive football, allowed six goals in a match.
Juventus’ 2020-21 season, Andrea Pirlo’s first and only in charge, was a failure by the club’s own lofty standards. Pirlo delivered the Coppa and Supercoppa, but Juve’s nine-year grip on the Scudetto was ended by Inter Milan while Cristiano Ronaldo’s Champions League dream was humiliatingly crushed by Porto in the Round of 16.
The fallout was immense with Pirlo sacked and Ronaldo sold, making the campaign one of Juve’s most dramatic — thankfully, Amazon Prime Video Sport was there filming it all.
Ole Gunnar Solksjaer sobrevive un día más como entrenador del Manchester United, luego de la espectacular remontada del equipo inglés sobre Atalanta en la Champions League. Los Diablos Rojos se quedaron con el triunfo luego de ir cayendo 0-2, con un gol salvador de no otro que Cristiano Ronaldo y en un partido cuya previa estuvo marcada por el ambiente hostil que vivió el equipo italiano en su hotel de concentración.