Yesterday's evening game started at 21:00 and video-highlights were only published at 1:00 am today, so, instead of writing my recap without that video available, I waited for this morning. Fiorentina opened the match-day for a reason: they have to play their first Champions' League's game in the middle of next week, on Wednesday the 4th of September, so it made sense that they could get a pair more days to rest. The home match vs Napoli wasn't an easy one, since the host team was very well organized and, as I mentioned on the previous page, had a solid market-season. At 37, Vero Boquete remains by far the most important Fiorentina's player: dribblings, assists, shots; she does everything, but especially she's the core of the team's play-making, everything passes by her feet. Newly signed Agnese Bonfantini was a very dynamic physical presence and she even scored a goal early in the 1st Half, that was though disallowed for a foul on her marker. The only actual goal of the game was scored late in the 2nd Half and it came for another new player, Danish Sofie Bruun Bredgaard (that I had mentioned how good had previously been in Sweden, at Rosengård), who played the last half-hour of the game and basically scored at her first touch, from an assist of guess who? Of course Vero Boquete. So, three points for Fiorentina, who can now concentrate on their Champions' League's clash, and a good test for their new players. Napoli didn't exactly impress but they didn't let down either; they will sure make points elsewhere. The other match from yesterday was Roma's derby: the rivalry between Roma and Lazio has always been fierce on the capital-city, and now that Lazio have been promoted to Serie A, it can take place again in women's football also. Full ranks for Italy's Champions' (apart from Spanish DF Oihane Valdezate, who recently tore her ACL, but she had never actually been a key player for Roma) who went ahead early in the 1st Half with a header by Valentina Giacinti from a CK action; later, though, the team had to face their recurring problem of not converting their chances: helped by the woodwork and by some outstanding saves by newly-signed Sara Cetinja, Lazio resisted the onslaught and got the chance to strike back. Another new signing who looks very good, Franch FW Clarisse Le Bihan, equalized just before HT and in the 2nd Half Lazio even went ahead with captain Antonietta Castiello (just on-side on that action! ). It needed an Elena Linari's scorcher from outside the box in the additional time for Roma to avoid the loss, but it sure was a thorny start of the league for the reigning champions! Yesterday's matches: Fiorentina 1-0 Napoli Lazio 2-2 Roma Highlights from yesterday:
I am sorry: not sure what the deal with DAZN for the rights overseas is. You can at least watch the highlights from the FIGC's YouTube channel that I use to post here, or are they geo-blocked too for you?
Just one match played yesterday (the last two ones are sceheduled for today). New coach Giampiero Piovani couldn't have hoped for a better start for his Inter: their solid market campaign translated into a square win vs Sampdoria. In the last 6 seasons, Piovani has done wonders with the limited financial budget Sassuolo could grant him: now that he has a big team in his hands, could it be the chance to finally grab a Champions' League's spot, both for him and for Inter? I didn't watch the match (not sure if it was possible, actually) and I uselessly waited for hours for highlights to surface, but they were never uploaded to the usual FIGC's YouTube channel. I hope there isn't any legal challenge about the rights, this season, that prevents the federation from showing highlights of some teams' home game. It would be very sad for women's football's visibility in Italy. Anyway, since I saw no pictures of the game, I can't comment on it and I can only give you the list of the scorers: 16' Annamaria Serturini, 38' Michela Cambiaghi, 41' Beatrice Merlo, 59' Lina Magull, 82' Elisa Polli. By reading the line-ups, I can tell you that Inter started their new Icelandic GK Cecilía Rán Rúnarsdóttir and some other new signings, including Marie Detruyer and Martina Tomaselli; Tessa Wullaert and Elisa Bartoli weren't even on the bench instead, so I figure they probably had some injury. Yesterday's match: Inter 5-0 Sampdoria
Still no highlights on FIGC's YouTube channel , but the respective clubs have uploaded their own highlights; Sampdoria's ones are embaddable (so you'll find them below), but they're shorter and without comment, so I advise to watch Inter's ones instead, from their website. These highlights give the idea of how much complete Inter's dominance was beyond the final score, that could have been worse for Sampdoria without some outstanding saves by Amanda Tampieri and a pair crossbar-hits. Annamaria Serturini not only scored, she also served two assists and hit the crossbar from direct FK: at times she looked as unstoppable as Emilie Haavi was in Roma last season (and it's now clear why she transferred to Inter: in her role she was blocked by the Norwegian ). Michela Cambiaghi's goal was technically very good. It's interesting that Haley Bugeja meets again, at Inter, Giampiero Piovani, who had launched her 4 seasons ago in Sassuolo: I have the impression that the Maltese striker, this season, could get more playing time than she had in her previous months at Inter. Sampdoria's channel's highlights:
Evening matches make it really difficult for me to update this thread on the same day of the matches, at least on this first match-day (once again, the video-highlights of the last match were uploaded at 1:00 am): hopefully next match-days will be mostly played in the afternoon (or in the early evening at max) and shouldn't have this same problem. Anyway, as a bonus, I am going to also post highlghts of Inter-Sampdoria, who were indeed finally posted on the official FIGC's YouTube channel in the early afternoon of yesterday, at around 14:00 (hint: it's basically the same video of the Inter's website, with some of the obnoxious shouting from the stadium's announcer erased ). Do you all remember Sassuolo's last part of 2023-2024 season, when it seemed like all of their matches were ending with 8 or 9 goals? Well, nothing changed, apparently: under Gian Loris Rossi, former Giampiero Piovani's assistant, Sassuolo keep showcasing a dangerous and diverse offense-line along with an atrocious horror-show of a defense. Juventus scored with most of their new signings, including Chiara Beccari who openened the score vs her team from the last season: but the game also saw the first official goal at Juventus (some of these players had already scored in some of the summer's friendly matches) for Valentina Bergamaschi, Amalie Vangsgaard and Alisha Lehmann (the other two goals came from usual suspects instead: Cristiana Girelli from PK in the 1st Half and Sofia Cantore with a billiard-like shot at the beginning of the 2nd Half). Sassuolo, though, looked far from helpless: they equalized Juventus' initial advantage in the 1st Half with their top-scorer Lana Clelland and they even managed to come back from 1-4 to 3-4 in the middle of the 2nd Half with goals by newly signed Salvadorian Samantha Fisher and young Italian Valentina Gallazzi. Their defense, though, looks too bad to be true: in particular captain Benedetta Orsi looks like a player who lost her way: it seems difficult to remember that last year she was part of the National Team's roster at the WWC 2023 (where she anyway scored an ill-famed own goal): in this match she conceded a PK with an awkward handball in the 1st Half and she basically assisted Alisha Lehmann for the last one of Juventus' goals at the end of the 2nd Half. She sure needs to somehow raise her game: I wonder if it's mostly mental or if she actually had less talent than she was credited for. Given the respective market-campaigns, I have to say that I am not surprised at all by the final score of Como-Milan: while the club of the lake had a constant stream of good signings under the expert eye of their longtime market-manager Mirco Keci, who has always built solid teams in the past, Milan's only significant summer's hit was former Ajax's coach Suzanne Bakker: but a new coach is not enough, if you basically give her not much more than the roster that finished outside of the title-pool last season! The match was much more tame than Sassuolo-Juventus and the only goal came from a give-away in the midfield leading to a fast offensive flash by Como: @Lohmann will be happy to know that the scorer was 23 yo Süd-Tiroler Nadine Nischler. Milan's attempts to equalize were confused at best and you could argue that Como was closer to make it 2-0 than Milan to reach an 1-1 score (although it wasn't anyway an exciting match to watch). In Milan, Angelica Soffia looked particularly poor, since she wasted the few chances her team had and she was far from flawless in defense. Bottom line: Como look like a solid team, while Milan don't give the impression that they can do much better than they did in the last pair of season. Yesterday's matches: Sassuolo 3-6 Juventus Como 1-0 Milan Highlights:
It was quite funny how Orsi reacted when Lehmann challenged her, she just tracked back and tracked back like it was Ronaldinho she was facing. In the end she gifted Lehmann with a perfect assist. Wonder if she, like Durante, got traumatizd by her disastrous world cup. Hope she have had people to talk with about the situation, everybody can make misstakes.. Easy to forget that Milan was th 2nd team in Italy 3 years ago, now it seems to be a team mostly consisting of left-overs from other clubs, hard to build a winning side from that. Very poorly managed club. We have to wait some time though to evaluate Bakker, it probably takes time to put in her mark on the team
UEFA Women's Champions' League's Brøndby-Fiorentina underway: we're 0-1 at HT, but t could be more, basically it was one way traffic for the Italian team, who had all of the chances. It's important to convert at least another early in 2nd Half, to avoid problems. These are the starting line-ups: Brøndby (3-5-2): Mukasa; Madsen, I. Sigurdardottir, Tavlo-Petersson; Myrseth, Karlsen, Jans, Buchberg, Halldorsdottir; Hornemann, Nielsen. All.: Saeternes. Fiorentina (4-2-3-1): Fiskerstrand; Erzen, Georgieva, Tortelli, Faerge; Johannsdottir, Snerle; Bonfantini, Boquete, Janogy; Catena. All.: De La Fuente If you're in Italy, the game is streamed on Fiorentina's website (not sure if that straming it's visible anywhere else in Europe ). The goal was assisted by Madelen Janogy, who crossed an excellent ball from the Left-Side that Agnese Bonfantini powerfully headed in. Fiorentina look in control, but that 2nd goal is needed; it's not worth to suffer in a game that's being so comfortably dominated!
Ok, no second goal! Just a post hit by Alexandra Jóhannsdóttir in the 2nd Half. But the game anyway ended with a 0-1 score and no particular heartache. Agnese Bonfantini was very good, not only because of the goal and the header-assist for Alexandra Jóhannsdóttir, but also because her physical presence demanded respect from Danish players. Madelen Janogy and Vero Boquete were very technical and smart and contributed to Fiorentina's constant offensive possession, that left just a few spare counterattack-actions to Brøndby. The minimum target of this campaign was reaching the final of this "mini-tournament" vs Ajax and it was reached. Anything more will be a boon, considering that Ajax made quarter-finals last season!
Fiorentina played very nice kind of football, but you can see they lack a proper striker, one who just smash it in! Think Bredgaard could be a bit of that , she seems more direct, but she's a midfielder if I'm correct.
Agnese Bonfantini should play that role, theoretically, but she's not always a proper center-striker, sometimes she drifts to the wings. I agree that Sofie Bredgaard looks very good: in these first games she was played as a super-sub, but I wouldn't mind seeing her start. You're right, though, that she's not a proper striker either.
Bonfantini has never been a striker, or at least I think so. She definitely got the characterstisc of a winger, likes to dribble and cut in from the side. She's closer to Janogy than Giacinit/Girelli IMO. One player that I think actually masters both is my favourite Cambiaghi . This been a Fiorentina problem for some time, think they wanted Hammarlund as a striker before, but for some reason it didnt work..
Well, I was out and I couldn't watch the game, but I am happy to say that Fiorentina defeated Ajax by 0-1 and advaced from this initial mini-tournament in Denmark. I rewatched part of the 2nd Half: Fiorentina looked quite solid to me while Ajax was some pale carbon-copy of the team who reached the quarter-finals last season: they missed too many players compared to that team and the ones who remained are not enough; Sherida Spitse is old and Lily Yohannes can't do much alone. Fiorentina scored quite late (81') with a good action in the box by Madelen Janogy, assisted by (who else? ) Vero Boquete. Previously, though, a shot by Janogy herself that had been deflected by the crossbar could have gone in, but with no goal-line technology there was no way to properly assess it. After Forentina scored, they managed to play for time in an effective way for the remaining 15 minutes of regular + additional time (difficult to beat them at that game: new Norwegian GK Cecilie Fiskerstrand, perfectly in tune with her team-mates, at some point, when the eager Danish ball-boy was handing her the ball for a goal-kick, she refused that with a "take-your-time" gesture and went reaching for another farther ball ). Vero Boquete always looked like the heart of this team, a veritable "coach on the pitch": she will be key for the next matches also. So, Italy keeps three teams in the UEFA Women's Champions' League: a very good start of the season. There are no yet highlights of the game that I know of, but I can give you the full match video with comment in Italian (the "ghost goal"'s action starts at 49':50", about 1:15":50" of the video; the goal, as already mentioned, is at 81') : Meanwhile, since I hadn't posted any highlights of Brøndby-Fiorentina from three days ago, here they are.
Agree Fiorentina played another good game.The got lots of tricky players in attack ,I might've underrated them a bit. Still think their defence is quite weak, don't understand why they didn't go for a defender in the transfer window, oh well there still some days left... Anyway good result for Fiorentina and Italy .
I am not going to fully cover Coppa Italia, or at least not until all Serie A's club will enter it. Anyway, today the matches of the Round of 32 of the competition were played and two Serie A's teams entered at this stage (basically they're the last two positioned ones, based on the previous season's result: thus newly-promoted Lazio, who replaced Pomigliano, and Napoli, who had finshed one-to-last). I'll only give the scores; for Serie A's teams (who both advanced to the next stage) I am going to add the names of the scorers (many new signings among them). Not sure if there will be available highlights later (Orobica-Lazio already had some, but they were behind a paywall on the club's website): in case they surface, I am going to post them later. Today's scores (advancing team in bold): Freedom Cuneo 2-1 Ternana Orobica 1-2 Lazio (46' Cattuzzo - 40' Piemonte (PK), 71' Kaján) Arezzo 2-0 ChievoVerona San Marino 0-3 Parma Bologna 3-0 Genoa Vis Mediterranea 2-5 Napoli (27' Pettenuzzo (OG), 80' Cinquegrana - 4' Banusic, 9' Martinovic, 40' Sciabica, 56' Pettenuzzo, 75' Moretti) Res Roma 3-4 Cesena (after extra-time) Brescia 1-2 Verona Next round (from 5 to 7 of October, with all of the other Serie A's teams entering the competition): Bologna-Roma Napoli-Sampdoria Parma-Inter Sassuolo-Cesena Arezzo-Fiorentina Freedom Cuneo-Milan Lazio-Como Juventus-Verona
Three draws: one good- Roma-Servette, one ok- Fiorentina-Wolfsburg, one very tough-Juve-PSG PSG feels kinda like a nightmare opponent for Juve, at least they don't have Chawinga this year.. but I am always worried for italian teams against french athletic sides.. Juve needs to sort their defence out asap. Calligaris and Cascarino will not work, too unstable, can Rossucci be the miracle cure again?
The draw for UEFA Women's Champions' League just took place. Considering the possibile options, I guess we can say it wasn't too much bad for the Italian teams. In the Champion's Path, Roma were paired with Servette (that were already beaten by Juventus in one of their previous campaigns): no team in that pool looked particularly dangerous, except maybe Hammarby, so the draw wasn't much of a thriller. Should Roma fail to advance, it would be on them, sure not on the draw. The League Path was much more tricky, since there weren't actual "weak teams" that Fiorentina and Juventus could have picked. Considering the possible options (including the likes of Manchester City and Arsenal), Fiorentina didn't actually get a completely impossible job: the Wolfsburg team seen last season and at the beginning of the current one doesn't look anywhere close to the juggernaut who had reached two finals in the previous 4 seasons (and never less than the quarter-finals in that same time-span): I am not saying it will be "easy" for the Viola, but maybe only Real Madrid could have been seen as possibly weaker, at least on paper, among the 5 teams from this stage's pool. Juventus has got the most difficult task instead, since they were paired with PSG: frankly I can't envision any possible way for them to advance. Of course PSG have played some very stinky matches last year at group stage, but they had been depleted by a boatload of key-injuries: when later they got back their top-starters, they looked much more solid, as I expect them to be at the beginning of this season also. So, my prediction is that Roma should easily advance, while Juventus will be most probably crushed by PSG. Fiorentina is not actually a coin toss, because Wolfsburg remain much stronger on paper and have the international experience to overcome any possibile shortcomings, but I anyway see it as an open match, much more than Juventus-PSG.