Serie A reaches boiling point
Napoli hopes hanging
MILAN, April 17, (AFP): Napoli’s dwindling Serie A title hopes are hanging on a win over Udinese on Wednesday before this weekend’s top-of-thetable clash against Juventus which could seal a seventh-straight title for the champions.
The Italian league is approaching its epilogue with two rounds of matches this week but the final word on who will lift the Scudetto could be decided on Sunday evening, at the end of the big match between Juventus and Napoli at the Allianz Stadium.
Six points separate the six-time reigning champions from secondplaced Napoli with six games to go after AC Milan’s Gianluigi Donnarumma’s last-gasp save denied Napoli a win at the San Siro on Sunday.
But Napoli believe they can throw open the championship again by garnering maximum points against Udinese and Juventus as they target a third title after 1987 and 1990.
“There are still 18 points up for grabs,” insisted Napoli captain Marek Hamsik. “The gap between us and Juventus is getting big, but we must keep believing until it’s no longer mathematically possible.”
A Napoli win over 13th-placed Udinese would put pressure on Juventus who have big games to come against historic rivals Inter Milan and Roma, who are both fighting for Champions League places.
Juventus travel Wednesday to Crotone in the sole of the Italian peninsula to face a side who are battling for survival, third from bottom of the table.
But Sassuolo and Spal have both recently shown Napoli and Juventus that it is possible to earn a draw even if you have 50 points fewer.
“It’s the decisive week but before thinking of Napoli we have to beat Crotone,” said French midfielder Blaise Matuidi, who said he was expecting “a difficult game, very difficult”.
“We will have to stay very alert because even against Spal everyone said we would win. But this time we will not be taken by surprise,” he warned.
For Matuidi it would be a first title with the Turin side “but for Juventus it would be the seventh consecutive Scudetto, an exceptional goal, crazy”.
Below the top two teams the scramble for the two remaining Champions League places heats up.
Roma and Lazio, third and fourth on 61 points, play Genoa and Fiorentina respectively.
Juventus captain Gianluigi Buffon conceded Monday that sometimes he gets it wrong but that the dramatic Champions League game against Real Madrid had made him feel alive.
The 40-year-old goalkeeper was sent-off by referee Michael Oliver after his furious reaction to a last-minute Juventus’ Benedikt Howedes (right), and Sampdoria’s Duvan Zapata vie for the ball during the Italian Serie A soccer match between Juventus and Sampdoria at the Allianz Stadium in Turin, Italy on April
15. (AP) penalty at the Bernabeu Stadium which dumped Juventus out of the Champions League.
Deprived of what could likely be his last chance to lift the only major title missing from his collection the 2006 World Cup winner mercilessly blasted the referee after the game as “a murderer” for killing off Juventus’ dreams with “a rubbish bin” in place of a heart.
“The decisions we make are a way of defining ourselves and making us what we want to be,” Buffon said at a sponsors event in Turin on Monday.
“You can even go too far, sometimes getting it wrong. But that means you’re alive, and that’s why I came into the world.
“After the Bernabeu I went for long walks, mushrooms and daisies. It was a week that allowed me to experience strong emotions, beautiful, pure adrenaline. “I also live for that.” Italy icon Buffon has said this will be his last season and he announced his international retirement after Italy’s dramatic failure to qualify for the World Cup finals for the first time in 60 years.