Serie A

Benevento finally got off the goose egg. After starting the Serie A campaign with 14 straight losses, an Alberto Brignoli goal in the 95th minute gave Benevento a 2-2 home draw with AC Milan on Sunday. Oh, did we mention Brignoli is a goalkeeper?

With Benevento trailing 2-1 late but with a man advantage after Alessio Romagnoli was sent off for a second yellow card, Brignoli marched up the pitch for a free kick in the fifth minute of five minutes of stoppage time. Improbably, the ball found his head and zipped past Gianluigi Donnarumma and into the goal. 

This isn’t exactly a hot take, but damn that Juventus defense can be impressive, even after losing two key figures from last season’s rearguard. Massimiliano Allegri has created a defensive unit that, on its day, can shut down the most potent of offenses. They don’t sit super deep or press super high, but their supreme organization dulls even the sharpest of attacks. 

The Bianconeri defense pitched a ninth shutout of the season in a 1-0 blanking of league-leading Napoli on Friday at Stadio San Paolo in Naples, the home side’s first Serie A loss of the season. 

So maybe VAR doesn’t get every single little call right. Nor does it turn referees into infallible robots. But we think every soccer fan can get on board with the VAR decision during the Roma-Genoa match on Sunday. The VAR spotted this pathetic Daniele De Rossi slap on Gianluca Lapadula, which resulted in both players rolling around on the ground like they had just been shot. 

After a review, the referee brandished red for De Rossi. Lapadula miraculously recovered from his injuries and scored the ensuing penalty to equalize and the match ended in a 1-1 draw.

Vincenzo Montella has been fired as AC Milan coach.

Finally, Milan has initiated the “Unsworth protocol” — sack an underachieving manager after he’s overseen a summer of massive spending and dismal football, only to replace him with a vastly unqualified club legend. In many ways, Everton and Milan are exactly alike.

But whereas Everton is currently fighting an unlikely relegation battle, Milan sits seventh place in the table. Surely, after such a huge overhaul, they should be allowed time to gel together, time to fail together and time to come together as a team?

Inter Milan can return to the top of the Serie A table on Saturday with a victory over Cagliari, an achievement heading into December that even the most impassioned of Nerazzurri supporters couldn’t have predicted. The hiring of Luciano Spalletti has been a masterstroke, and an absence of European competition has allowed the side to flourish domestically with largely unchanged personnel in a 4-2-3-1 formation.