10 Things We Learned About Serie A This Weekend

By: chris | December 24th, 2007

1. Francesco Totti ain’t half bad.

After taking a two weeks off due to injury, Totti walked onto the pitch and played like he could walk on water. Scoring a brace, one of which was his patented cucchiaoi on a penalty, and created a whole lot out of a whole lot of nothin’ on numerous occasions. The brace makes it 9 goals in 10 games, and who knows how many had he not been injured on 3 separate occasions thus far.

2. Get men sent off against Roma. Seriously, you’ll have a better chance of winning.

Saturday they went against a 10 man Sampdoria for about 30 minutes, earlier in the month went against a 9 man Udinese squad. Both times Roma looked like shit, both times the team had their best scoring chances down men. So there’s the foolproof blueprint to beating Roma: Send a Primavera player onto the pitch, have him throw a haymaker at the official and then put a hurtin’ on the Giallorossi with 10 men. 80% of the time it works every time.

3. Dida suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.

Not only did he miss a ball straight up the pike, but he missed it because he dove away from the ball straight up the middle. Combine this with his antics in Glasgow and I think it’s fair to say there has never been a year in history when a goalkeeper has gone to ground more inappropriately than Dida this year. Howler doesn’t even begin to describe this goal. Dumb as shit is a decent start. Fucking garbage is another.

Inter – Milan, 2 : 1, Cambiasso
Uploaded by inter-milan-ru

4. You don’t need Sebastian Frey if you can score 5 goals a game.

Yeah yeah yeah, it was Cagliari, but this surely has to help out the mentality of the Viola as they go into the break. With a few weeks off helping to heal some of those bumps and bruises it could be back to business as usual in mid-January.

5. Catania sucks (every other week).

Last weekend Catania took down almost-big boys Udinese, and looked pretty good in the process. This week they lost 3-1 to Reggina, a side which had scored 9 goals all season, along with a single victory entering the game. All 3 goals came via Luca Vigiani. Catania needs some Lithium.

6. Luca Vigiani reads The Offside.

Last week I had this to say about Reggina:

8. Reggina couldn’t score in a Bangkok brothel and are heading towards Serie B in spectacular fashion.

Think they might miss that Rolando Bianchi feller a bit? They’ve scored nine goals this season. NINE. A 3-0 loss to Parma this weekend made things no better. The amaranti are in very real danger of going into the winter break with a single digit tally.

Luca: You made your point. Our most sincere apologies from The Offside.

7. Going down 2 goals and losing a man is a bad thing…unless you’re playing Palermo.

Palermo went up by two just after the half, gave one back to Lazio, then saw Amauri channel his inner-Roberto Baggio and put one over the bar on a peno, allowing Lazio to tie up the game in the 80th minute despite being down to 10. And you wonder why Zampa is crazy.

8. The referees were playing Santa and in the giving spirit during the weekend before Christmas.

Either that or all the players were lashing out because they needed more shopping time and couldn’t be bothered with playing. 6 red cards handed out along with 6 penalties. The offenders: Sebastiano Siviglia, Lorenzo Di Silvestri, Vincenzo Grella, Francesco Pratali, Gennaro Sardo and Sergio Volpi.

9. Kaka is SICK.

Milan may have lost, and Kaka may have disappeared at times, but he had what is easily the moment of the game, as crappy as its repercussions were. Kaka waltzed through the Inter defense to take on Walter Samuel, and got Walter so turned around and embarrassed that he tore his ACL (1:10 mark). Yeah, there’s that saying “he broke the defender’s ankles”, but how often does it actually happen? Ever? (Then Ricky was taken down from behind in the box by Cambiasso which wasn’t called because the ref was staring at hot chicks in the stands, or something not on the field.)

* – Samuel is done for the year. Sad for Walter, who was reclaiming his Wall status, but damn, this is the type of stuff YouTube was made for.

10. Torino can’t help themselves. Draw.

No matter what, whether they should win, or whether they should lose, Torino manages to pull out a draw. Almost inexplicable. Whether it’s last week when they should have scored 4 on an out of form Roma side, or this week, when Matteo Sereni saved a PK while down a man, then went out injured and saw his replacement concede a goal in the last 10 minutes after Napoli lost a man as well, making it an even 10 apiece. So that’s 11 draws in 17 games thus far. Torino fans must feel exceptionally indifferent.