In a professional career that began back in 1994 with a Lazio debut as a 17-year-old and lasted until as recently as 2014 with Chennaiyin FC in the Indian Super League, Italian defender Alessandro Nesta spent over 20 seasons defining the center half position.
Ahead of the weekend, the most eye-catchingest of matches was undoubtedly AC Milan versus Roma at San Siro on Sunday. It was one of those neat and tidy matches, games which allow us to check in with two teams who are competing with the same aim: finish in the top four, possibly threaten a title challenge.
It’s time to talk about Paulo Dybala. Actually, it was probably time to talk about Dybala two months ago, when he was rightly titillating the interest of the Barcelona board, possibly plugging a recently-emerged Neymar-sized hole in their starting XI. But even since then, Dybala has gone to a whole new level. Is it time to start talking about Dybala as being one of the very best in the world?
There’s an immediate hot take available here that I just can’t commit myself to: the departure of Neymar from Barcelona has had an uplifting effect on 33-year-old midfielder Andres Iniesta, and El Ilusionista is about to enjoy the consummate season because of a mixture of peak footballing intelligence and a proverbial unchaining on the left-hand side of Barca’s midfield.
Juventus arrived at the 2016-17 Champions League Final having surrendered only three goals in 12 matches. Thanks in large part to Lionel Messi, that total was matched in the 2017-18 edition of the competition after only one match, or 69 minutes to be precise.
Messi scored a fantastic brace and Ivan Rakitic added one of his own as Barcelona throttled an under-strength Juventus 3-0 at the Camp Nou to begin Champions League group play.
Serie A was struck by storms this weekend. While the United States was dealing with the horrors of the hurricanes, areas such as Livorno experienced their own extreme weather and loss of life. Miraculously, all but one match took place.
There were surprises. AC Milan faced its first real challenge and failed spectacularly. Fiorentina’s new-look side seemed to click and ran out 5-0 winners against a hapless Verona team. There were also more run-of-the-mill fixtures. Juventus won. Napoli won. Inter won. Fairly standard, really.
Patrik Schick. He’s a Czech forward. He signed with AS Roma on Tuesday. But look, no one cares about the player. Let’s talk about that announcement video.
#Schick #ASRoma pic.twitter.com/JAIvKGYS7P
— AS Roma English (@ASRomaEN) August 29, 2017