5th match-day of the title-pool today, we're at the middle of the road. A win by Roma or a loss by Juventus (or both, of course) would have made the trick today to decide the title race, but it didn't happen: oh, well, it's not like Roma aren't anyway going to nail it in one of the next week-ends. Juventus were first to open this match-day, at their home vs Sassuolo, and, after a quite boring 1st Half, it was the visitor team that went ahead with a very good action: Chiara Beccari's finishing justified my praise from a few posts above this one, but look at how neat were the trap and the cross from 2nd Half's super-sub Lana Clelland. Juventus didn't give up though: Lisa Boattin proved to be the usual set-pieces' specialist, with a goal from Free-Kick and an assist from Corner-Kick; the decider was scored by Swedish Paulina Nyström, who had been lately overshodowed by "Joe" Echegini, but this time replaced her on the pitch and delivered. So the race for the title is still ongoing: who believes that Juve can close an 11 points gap in the 4 games still available for each team? Fiorentina-Roma was a quite entertaining 0-0 draw, with decent chances for both teams; no-one of them looked like they had a particular urgency, though: Roma, maybe, were thinking at the fact that the title is going to come in the next weeks anyway and weren't particularly motivated by a celebration away from home (although they could even win in it while they are resting, in the next match-day, should it happen that Juventus don't win their match vs Inter); Fiorentina are basically in no-man's land right now: being 10 points behind Juventus and 8 points ahead of Sassuolo, they're somehow guaranteed 3rd place and nothing more than that. In fact, although not yet sanctioned by the numbers, a lot of the final positions are virtually decided already. Today's scores: Juventus 2-1 Sassuolo Fiorentina 0-0 Roma Today's highlights:
Two matches of the relegation-pool were played today. In the one that was played in Genoa, Milan always looked in control of the game, even when Sampdoria tried a comeback in the 2nd Half. The opener had been by Kamila Dubcová at the end of the 1st Half (although most of the work had been done by Chanté Dompig), then the advantage was doubled just after the Half-Time break with an header by Evelyn Ijeh. Sampdoria managed to score one back with usual suspect Victoria Della Peruta, from an assist by always dependable Brasilian fantasista Taty Sena, but it was Evelyn Ijeh again who sealed the deal with a personal brace. Milan of course don't look like they belong to the relegation-pool, but they deserved to end there, so they now have to live with it. Today's game needed to be won at all costs by Pomigliano, if they wanted to keep a realistic chance to catch up with Napoli; it's true that they still have the return match at their home available at the last match-day of the league, but it will be useless if they get there while still sitting 4 points behind their rivals. On the other hand, a loss today would have probably been the last nail in the coffin for them, while with this draw they somehow have a lifeline (although it's difficult to figure where they could find the points they're missing, since Napoli looked like the only opponent currently within their reach). Pomigliano's remaining hope has a name, and it's Nicole Arcangeli: 20 yo starlet scored the opener today and hit the post later in the game; if they have an half-chance to make it, it's in this players' feet. Napoli, though, managed to equalize later in the 2nd Half with a FK by Marija Banusic that was poorly handled by Pomigliano's GK Emilie Gavillet; she later somehow made up for that with two outstanding saves, but the damage had been done by then. Bottom line: this draw is gold for Napoli; nice effort but not quite enough for Pomigliano. Today's scores: Sampdoria 1-3 Milan Napoli 1-1 Pomigliano Standings (Title Pool) Roma 61 (+45, 58 goals scored) Juventus 50 (+35, 57 goals scored) Fiorentina 40 (+9, 36 goals scored) Sassuolo 32 (-2, 24 goals scored) Inter 30 (0, 36 goals scored) Standings (Relegation Pool) Milan 33 (+10, 36 goals scored) Como 25 (-16, 24 goals scored) Sampdoria 24 (-14, 19 goals scored) Napoli 11 (-24, 17 goals scored) Pomigliano 7 (-42, 16 goals scored) Today's highlights:
Nice to see Archangeli, looked really sharp. Banusic was the one who got the MVP for that match, but for me Archangeli looked outstanding if you judge by the highlights. Juve got some interesting players out on loan: Beccari, Schatzer, Archangeli, Toniolo etc. Would be cool if they could go back to be a team with an italian core, as they were in their title streak. Roma for me seems to be heading in a very international direction, not sure even Giacinti will be start player going forward, so would be nice if Juve could be an italian counterweight.
You're right that Juventus have a very good youth team and are investing in youth Italian players, but Roma have an excellent youth academy also and, although it happened at times this season that they had just 3 or 4 Italian players on the pitch, it's also true that they keep having an important core of Italian players: I don't see Valentina Giacinti going anywhere and her, Manuela Giugliano and Elena Linari arguably form the spine of the team and it's not a case that they are key-players in Italy NT also. Add Elisa Bartoli, who, although quite aged, is still an important asset to the team, and it's difficult to argue that Roma don't keep on the team an Italian core, along with many important international pieces. It's true that some of the youth talents Roma are grooming aren't Italian: 18 yo Slovenian Zara Kramžar, who have played in Roma's academy and then in the senior team since ages by now; or recently signed 20 yo Swiss FW Alayah Pilgrim. On the other hand, there are interesting young Italian players on loan that come from Roma also, not just from Juventus, for instance Alice Corelli and Valentina Gallazzi in Napoli. And it's not like Juventus don't invest in international young talent, ad "Joe" Echegini's signing recently showed. It's complicated: maybe there is a similar tendency to what you noticed (or wished), but at the moment both Juventus and Roma are a mix of Italians and internationals, and the fact that Juventus seem more-Italian oriented can depend on a combination of the long wave of their original raid of the Italian market (when they basically signed from Brescia most of the core-players who were going to give them their title-streak) and of some of their international signings basically flopping (see Sara Björk Gunnarsdóttir) and needing to be replaced by domestic players.
Your'e right I was a bit misinformed. I just saw that Roma started with 3 italian players against Fiorentina and was a bit shocked, but that was actually a bit low. mostly they start with around 5 players. Anyway I looked back two years ago and the it seems like they usually started with 7-8 italian players then. Anyway this is true for every big team nowadays, Juve very much included, guess represents the improving standard of Serie A. Think a lot of young italian players have managed to shine anyway this season: Beccari,Depalleruta, Schatzer, Catena etc. You are also right about Juve sucking up the best italian players and talents at their inception. Interesting though that Brescia managed to finnish at the same points as Juve in their last season, even though Juve had taken something like 6 important players from them that season. Brescia was interesting ,do you know how they could attract so much talented players?
Well, it was mostly the passion and the investment of then president/owner of the club Giuseppe Cesari: it still was the "heroic" era of women's football in Italy, when no club was actually backed-up by their men's club counterparts (men's clubs entering women's football is a quite recent evolution in Italy, dating to way less that 10 years ago), so it was enough that a fairly wealthy pioneer in a rich part of the country wanted to seriously invest in a club for it to attract some of the best players around. Women's football, back then, was still far from professionalism, but some private clubs, because of the personal investments of the owner, could offer similar conditions to what professionalism was going to offer some years along the road; that's the story of some of the top-clubs at the time: not only Brescia, but also Bardolino Verona (who wasn't affiliated with men's Hellas Verona, back then) or Torres.
Thanks for the summary blisett, very interesting to hear about the details about that era! Whats interesting with Brescia is that so many players seems to have played with them at one stage of their career, like: the core of Juve(counted to 7-8 start players), but also Giugliano, Giacinti, Linari, Serturini and more It's interesting how italian womens football lost their way after being the first semi proffensional leauge, in the 70s, in the world and a real pioneer in womens football. Feels like italian womens football was relaunched with Fiorentina and Juve starting womens team. As late as in the 90s Italy played two euros final, with Morace as the MVP, at the last one in 1997, how god was she?! Probably would have been a superstar in this era as well.
Dragoni seems to be headed for Serie A and Roma. Think the leauges gets more and more exciting, but I'm also a bit of an optimist, lets see what happens in the summer market, often some nice players leave then. Anyway with Dragoni in Roma, we probably also got Beccari in Juve and Pavan in Inter add to that foreign talent like Echegeni and Pilgrim and I think next season starting to look quite exciting...
Other recent market news seem to indicate that Juventus signed German international Paulina Krumbiegel from TSG Hoffenheim to shore up their midfield.
Interesting! How good is she? Know she scored vs USA like one and a half years ago. Seen one clip got the feeling she might be a fighter,which I think Juve needs to battle Roma.
Just a reminder: Roma won the title yesterday without even being on the pitch, because Juventus lost at home to Inter. But I am currently on a two-days trip out of Italy, so I am probably going to only update this thread tomorrow.
For the reasons explained above, I'll be shorter than usual in commenting the matches, but I'll anyway update the thread with scores, rankings and highlights. On Friday, under a pouring rain, Inter score two goals in the 1st Half with Elisa Polli and Haley Bugeja, and Juventus, despite many dengerous shots, can't find a way to come back in the game. After all, Inter was the team with the more realistic target, since they managed to catch up again with Sassuolo at 4th place with this win. Juventus, instead, was just waiting for Roma's title to be officially proclaimed one of these weeks: it happened today, so the particular formula of this title-pool had Roma become the Champions of Italy on a match-day when they were resting and didn't even see the pitch! Oh, well, I guess the supporters will be happy again and will properly celebrate the team on their next home game. The Saturday's games, instead, were all draws, although we sure didn't miss a good number of goals from those! The first of them was Sampdoria-Pomigliano, a clash between two teams who both recently changed their coach (Gian Loris Rossi replaced Salvatore Mango for Sampdoria on this month, Roberto Carannante replaced Alessandro Caruso for Pomigliano earlier this year). Pomigliano, despite their position in the ranking being almost hopeless, managed to equalize twice Sampdoria's advantage: the first time a deflection helped recently signed Argentinian Marianela Szymanovski's lob to enter the goal, thus equalizing Aurora De Rita's early goal; when Sara Baldi scored again for Sampdoria at 90'+1', this had seemed to spell doom for Pomigliano, but they managed to score again at 90'+4' with Debora Novellino from the last, desperate Corner-Kick of the game. In Napoli, Como scored against the run of play at the end of the 1st Half with Melania Martinovic, who had been subbed-in just one minute earlier. Late in the 2nd Half, the home team managed to equalize with a stunning volley by Marija Banusic (who had been the most dangerous player in the 1st Half, when she had already tried to score multiple times and had seen a goal disallowed for an obvious off-side) from an assist of Eli Del Estal. So Napoli manage to keep their 4 points advantage over Pomigliano. A whopping 8 goals in Firenze, but it's anyway a draw, by 4-4, between Fiorentina and Sassuolo (it was probably Sassuolo's last chance to try to catch up with their opponents of yesterday). The script of this match was anyway incredible, since Fiorentina had gone ahead by 4-1 in the 1st Half with a brace by Madelen Janogy and goals by Pauline Hammarlund and Emma Severini (Sassuolo had just managed to momentarily equalized the first goal with Cecilia Prugna). Then, in the 2nd Half, with a mix of good plays by Sassuolo and blunders from the home team, three goals from the visitors made the miracle: eternal Daniela Sabatino (38 years), Belgian Kassandra Missipo and finally, at 90'+1', 17 yo Manuela Sciabica who had just entered the pitch one minute earlier. What can I say? Give a look at highlights, they are worth. Friday's score: Juventus 0-2 Inter Yesterday's score: Sampdoria 2-2 Pomigliano Napoli 1-1 Como Fiorentina 4-4 Sassuolo Standings (Title Pool) Roma 61 (+45, 58 goals scored)(Italy's champions ) Juventus 50 (+33, 57 goals scored) Fiorentina 41 (+9, 40 goals scored) Inter 33 (+2, 38 goals scored) Sassuolo 33 (-2, 28 goals scored) Standings (Relegation Pool) Milan 33 (+10, 36 goals scored) Como 26 (-16, 25 goals scored) Sampdoria 25 (-14, 21 goals scored) Napoli 12 (-24, 18 goals scored) Pomigliano 8 (-42, 18 goals scored) Highlights:
Doesn't it feels like Napoli is a bit better than what the point shows? I feel they are in actual quality closer to Sampdoria than Pomigliano. It was weird they had so tough to score in the beginning of the season with attackers like Lazaro, Estal, Banusic and the talented Corelli. On a reflection on the season, as most of the positions are settled, I would say it's been a very competitive one. Roma for sure won in a dominating fashion and they are clearly the best team. I think they have struggled more then the stats shows though, but feel like they often win the tight games by condfidence. Actually the one game they lost, they lost by quit a margin playing and goal-wise. I think the format of the leauge is good for now, as I think theres too few good teams for a bigger leauge, also a plus with more competitive games . If teams from behind, like Lazio, Parma and Ternana shows good growth and results in Serie A I think we can start to think about going back to the old more classical format
There is still another Inter-Sassuolo to play, that I've already taken into account, though! (I know what you think about time travelers, but still... ).
One problem I see, though, is that not always the separation at 5th/6th place actually reflects two completely different classes of teams: you sometimes feel like there should have been at least one more team belonging to the title-pool or to the relegation-pool.
Good point, I guess we may booth think of Milan when thinking about a team belonging to the another class. Milan screwed it up quite a lot by themselse though and didn't even finish top6. Agree however with your point, ideally 6 teams would be in the title pool and in the future, ideally I would go back to the old format. I have some hope that Parma, Lazio and Ternana- rich owner from what i've heard, can widen the pool of good teams, hope they don't disappoints like Napoli ..
The last highlights video of the day has been just posted less than an half-hour ago: I am going to cover the whole match-day soon!
On the International Workers' day... Italian league is at work with a mid-week match-day! Under a constant rain here in Milan (where I live ), Inter went ahead by 2 goals vs Fiorentina between the end of the 1st Half and the beginning of the 2nd, with a PK converted by Lina Magull and an header by Agnese Bonfantini. The hosts, though, found almost immediately a goal with a middle-range scorcher by 20 yo talent Emma Severini; then it was almost all Inter all the time and only some miraculous saves by GK Rachele Baldi and by assorted defenders on the goal-line prevented the home team from scoring a third goal. So, in the end, when Sofie Junge Pedersen fouled Miriam Longo at 90'+5' in Inter's box, Vero Boquete had the chance to equalize: and she didn't wasted it. With one goal and one assist, once again the Spanish star carried Fiorentina on her shoulders. With the win they almost had in their hands, Inter would have gained 3 points over Fiorentina and would have kept the 3rd-place race open; with the draw, instead, Fiorentina officially qualified for the UEFA Women's Champions' League 2024-2025: congratulations on a very good season! One can't sure say that today there weren't some thrilling games with unexpected endings. The other team from Milan, Milan AC, was ahead by 2-0 too, as their fellow citizens of Inter were vs Fiorentina, but they were caught on a 2-2 draw in a game that they had seemed to dominate even more. Funny thing was that both Milan's goals were scored the same way, with a Gosia Mesjasz's header from CK's action (and she almost scored a third, again with an header from CK! Pomigliano's DFs had basically forgotten her existence; or can't defend CKs at all ); if I am not wrong, they were Polish DF's first goals in this league. In the last half-hour, though, Pomigliano scored with Marianela Szymanovski, at her 2nd consecutive goal in less then one week , and finally with Iris Rabot, who sealed the deal at 88'. This point is gold for Pomigliano, since they climb at just three points behind Napoli (who were resting today), with the direct clash vs them in hand at the last match-day (previous clashes between the two teams in the season were a win for each team and a 1-1 draw). Drama! * drums* ...and now the report everyone was waiting for! When Sassuolo plays, lately, you can expect a boatload of goal: 8 in the 4-4 draw vs Fiorentina last Saturday of course weren't enough, since today the crowd at the stadium could even enjoy 11 goals! But this time the Neroverdi couldn't complete their comeback vs the newly crowned Champions of Italy. Roma had gone ahead by 3-0 in just about 20' minutes with a brace by Valentina Giacinti and a goal by Manuela Giugliano, the main stars who shaped this second title for the team, and the game seemed already closed: it was just the beginning instead. Sassuolo found a goal before Half-Time with a good combination in the box by the veteran-duo of Daniela Sabatino and Lana Clelland. At the beginning of the 2nd Half, though, Roma scored again with Benedetta Glionna, giving Roma a 3 goals lead again. At the hour mark, Daniela Sabatino tapped-in after a super-save by Camelia Ceasar on Lana Clelland, but two minutes were enough for Evelyne Viens, to set the score on 2-5 for Roma. No-one could have figured what Sassuolo was going to do at this point: in just three minutes, between 75' and 77', they scored three goals with Loreta Kullashi, Lana Clelland (who thus posted a personal brace) and Valeria Monterubbiano, who exploited such an unexpected blunder by Camelia Ceasar that even the camera missed it and it was only caught in replays. In the end, though, it was Laura Feiersinger who scored the final goal for Roma: Sassuolo could have equalized again at 90', but 17 yo Slovenian Naja Poje Mihelič's shot crashed on the post! Sassuolo are sure a funny team, especially on the offense-line : now, if only they could defend a little better... . Finally, an almost "normal" game, between two teams that are in the middle of the rankings and don't have much more to ask from this season, that they're ending on a quite mediocre record. Como went ahead with a PK by Zsanett Kaján in the 1st Half an doubled the lead at the beginning of the 2nd with Julia Karlernäs; Sampdoria scored right away with Sara Baldi and were later close to an equalizer, but in the end it was Julia Karlernäs again, a key-player for Como in this season, who set the final score on 3-1 for the home team with her personal brace (both goals were headers). Today's scores: Inter 2-2 Fiorentina Pomigliano 2-2 Milan Sassuolo 5-6 Roma Como 3-1 Sampdoria Standings (Title Pool) Roma 64 (+46, 64 goals scored)(Italy's champions) Juventus 50 (+33, 57 goals scored) (qualified for UWCL 2024-'25) Fiorentina 42 (+9, 42 goals scored) (qualified for UWCL 2024-'25) Inter 34 (+2, 40 goals scored) Sassuolo 33 (-3, 33 goals scored) Standings (Relegation Pool) Milan 34 (+10, 38 goals scored) Como 29 (-14, 28 goals scored) Sampdoria 25 (-16, 22 goals scored) Napoli 12 (-24, 18 goals scored) Pomigliano 9 (-42, 20 goals scored) Highlights:
Not exactly. Back in 2022/23 she scored 3 goals for Milan in her debut season in Serie A (last time in January 2023 vs. Sampdoria). Unfortunatelly just after that season ended she had to undergo scheduled hip surgery in Summer 2023. She was back on the pitch barely over 3 months ago. 1,5 year passed between her last goal and now, and also she didn't play half of that time thus no wonder it was hard to recall her goals. (actually had to check this myself cuz I could only recall that she landed in round best XI's for a few times back in 22/23)
I actually didn't wrote what I meant: when I said "if I am not wrong, they were Polish DF's first goals in this league", I actually meant "in this season". I was aware of Gosia Mesjasz's long injury and I actually seemed to vaguely remember the goals from 2022-2023: I just expressed myself awkwardly. Anyway happy that you corrected my mistake, howewer it happened.