Italy

AC Milan's veteran forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored twice and also missed an open goal to give his side a 2-0 win over Bologna and get their Serie A campaign off to a winning start on Monday.

The 38-year-old broke the deadlock with a towering header in the 35th minute and added the second with a penalty — the first in Serie A this season — five minutes after the break.

Zlatan doing what he does best, score goals! pic.twitter.com/d2pb7ClW6X

Chile midfielder Arturo Vidal is on the verge of sealing a move to Inter Milan from Barcelona after landing in Milan on Sunday.

Inter's official Twitter account published a photo of Vidal's arrival and a video of the player, 33, saluting fans saying "Hi Inter, I'm here.”

| PHOTO@kingarturo23 has landed in Milan! pic.twitter.com/VivgtWo7pS

Andrea Pirlo’s first match as Juventus manager included debuts for 22-year-old American Weston McKennie and 20-year-old Swede Dejan Kulusevski, and both young talents did their manager proud in a 3-0 victory over Sampdoria at Allianz Stadium. 

It was Kulusevski, the Serie A Best Young Player award-winner last season while on loan at Parma, who opened the scoring in the 13th minute with a left-footed curler from the edge of the area.

What a beauty!

Napoli pounced on two defensive mistakes to win 2-0 at Parma in their opening match of the season on Sunday as spectators returned to Serie A for the first time since March.

Dries Mertens and Lorenzo Insigne got Napoli's campaign off to a winning start with second-half goals shortly after club record signing Victor Osimhen was brought on for his debut.

MILAN — Parma became the latest Serie A team to come under U.S. ownership when they were taken over by the Krause Group on Friday, the club said in a statement following a deal signed in Milan.

The group bought a 90 percent stake in Parma, which won three major European trophies during its heyday in the 1990s, was declared bankrupt in 2015 and returned to Serie A in 2018.

Nuovo Inizio, a group set up by local entrepreneurs which took over the club following its bankruptcy and relegation to the fourth tier of Italian football in 2015, will retain a 9 percent stake.

Ahead of opening its Serie A campaign next weekend, Juventus played a friendly against third division side Novara at the club’s training center on Sunday morning. As the first friendly of preseason, the match served as a debut for 22-year-old American Weston McKennie following his year-long loan to the club from Schalke.

Italy midfielder Nicolò Zaniolo will undergo surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee just weeks after recovering from a similar injury in his right knee, his club AS Roma said on Tuesday.

The 21-year-old limped out of Monday's Nations League match against the Netherlands in obvious pain after what looked like an innocuous tackle.

"Nicolò Zaniolo will undergo surgery on Wednesday after MRI scans today confirmed the player has suffered a complete tear to the anterior cruciate ligament of his left knee," Roma said in a statement.

Barcelona forward Luis Suárez is due to sit a language test on Monday in a bid to obtain Italian citizenship that would enable him to move to Serie A champions Juventus, Italian and Uruguayan media said Sunday.

There have been widespread reports that Juventus are chasing the 33-year-old Uruguayan who, if the moves go through, would line up alongside defender Giorgio Chiellini, the Italy defender he famously bit in a World Cup match in 2014.

MILAN — Bologna coach Sinisa Mihajlovic believes his children might have infected him with COVID-19, he said on Saturday after being forced to miss his team's pre-season training camp for the second year running.

Mihajlovic, who was diagnosed with leukaemia in July last year, said he remained asymptomatic and denied that he had done anything that could have put himself at risk.

Inter Milan forward Alexis Sanchez has said he was ready to end his ill-fated spell at former club Manchester United after only one training session with the Premier League side.

United had signed Chile international Sanchez in January 2018 after he scored 80 goals in 3-1/2 years at Arsenal, but he failed to reach those heights at Old Trafford under both Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, with five goals in 45 games.