For a moment, I had forgotten about Chawinga's transfer to OL. On second thought, though, although it makes things a little better for Juventus, it doesn't change much the maths of the betting odds.
Since the 5-1 between France and Italy I dream nighmares about strong athletic french players and add to that how easy PSG beat Roma last season. At least italian teams has gotten a bit better to hold the ball since then. In those day italian teams barely had the ball against superior opponents, even in Juves heroic champions run. Juves champions run was made by low defence all the time and crazy miracoulos (luck?)defending
Is it just me or is the South Tyrol region well represented in Italian women football? Seem like plenty youngsters coming up from there which is always nice to see wherever it happens.
You are very correct, have also thought about that. Besides Nishler there's Katja Schroffenegger: gk in Como and NT, Eva Schatzer: mf Juve and NT and Elise Pfattner: forward who plays in u20-NT and is loaned out from Juve. Maybe theres more, @blissett knows for sure
For an area of Italy not having a club in Serie A Femminile nor a top-level men's club that could support a women's section, Süd Tirol (or Alto Adige, as the Italian-speaking people there prefer to say ) sure has a solid structure for young-level recruitment and growth, and is indeed quite well represented in Italian women's football. Apart from already mentioned Nadine Nischler, the most recognized names are Como's GK Katja Schroffenegger and 20 yo MF Eva Schatzer, who recently came back to Juventus after being on loan for a season to Sampdoria. Not to be forgotten is Schatzer's cousin, Elisa Pfattner, also 20 yo, who played for long alongside her cousin both in Juventus Youth and in Italy's Youth National's Teams: although she remains a Juventus' player too, she's currently on loan to USV Neulengbach in ÖFB (Austrian Women's League) where she scored 5 goals in 28 matches in the last season.
...and after Champions' League's + Coppa Italia's break, Serie A Femminile is back with the second match-day: three matches were played today. The news are: Roma can't seem to win anymore and they're at just 2 points after 2 match-days! Maybe they've planned their conditioning to reach their physical peak of the season when the Champions' League's groups will start? Anyway, they look behind in their preparation at the moment and actually Sassuolo went closer to winning this game than Italy's reigning champions did. Roma had just few sparse chances and they only managed to score through an early set piece, a masterfully taken FK by Manuela Giugliano, but Sassuolo equalized right away with their veteran top-striker, 31 yo Scot Lana Clelland, at her second goal in two games; Roma's GK Camelia Ceasar was caught in no man's land by her lob, but she made up for that with a pair good saves later in the game. Anyway, Roma looked slow and out of ideas and arguably Sassuolo could have deserved a quite sensational away win if their strikers had been more clinical (Aurora De Rita, although a DF, was quite disappointed by her own miss and she expressed that with some colourful profanity in Italian that you can easily read on her lips ). Oh, by the way don't even dare to blink while watching the video highlights from today's games, because, for some reason, they have no replays! Como confirmed that they're a very good team, but they didn't manage to upset Juventus instead, despite going ahead early with a luxury-youngster with a lot of experience under her belt already despite being just 18 as Slovenian Zara Kramžar and despite reaching a 2-2 equalizer before Half-Time with Nadine Nischler from direct FK. Como sure hit the target with their new signings (by the way, Sarina Bolden debuted for them today as a starter). But Juventus look very solid right now: they equalized Como's initial advantage almost right away with Arianna Caruso and then they unleashed their new signings too: Hanna Bennison scored in the 1st Half, while Paulina Krumbiegel even scored a brace in the 2nd Half for the final 4-2 score. Juventus look quite good at the moment, almost defiantly, in a "throw anything at us, Roma, PSG, we don't care" kind of way. We're going to see if it lasts. Finally, the evening match was Milan-Fiorentina; this is a tough moment of the season for Sebastián de la Fuente's side: they were coming from the Champions' League mini-tournament vs Brøndby and Ajax that they have won last week and they have the first leg of the clash vs Wolfsburg scheduled for next week: it was sure difficult to keep their focus on the league match of today. The fact that Milan went ahead at 2' already with Evelyn Ijeh (from an individual action on the Left-Side by Angelica Soffia, maybe the best player for her team in this match) only made things worse for the visitor team. Fiorentina anyway managed to reverse the score in the 1st Half already, with always excellent Sofie Bredgaard and with Vero Boquete from a PK that was due to an awkward hanball from the ground by Chanté Dompig. The Viola already showed multiple times, in this beginning of the season, that they're very good at putting a game to sleep when they're ahead, and that's what they did in the 2nd Half, helped by the fact that it looks like Milan's players are still tryng to absorb new coach Suzanne Bakker's strategies and maybe they insisted too much with a slow building from the back-line. Fiorentina join Juventus at the top of the rankings, while waiting for Inter's match in Napoli tomorrow. Today's matches: Roma 1-1 Sassuolo Juventus 4-2 Como Milan 1-2 Fiorentina Highlights:
The first match of today was between two arguably mid-lower teams, but it was quite entertaining anyway. Sampdoria, who were the home team, pushed a little more for a goal, but they only managed to score it quite late, with an header by Finnish Nora Heroum, a veteran of this league, where she previoulsy played for Brescia, for Milan, for Parma and even for her opponents of today, Lazio. A dozen minutes later, though, the visitor team equalized, with Federica D'Auria converting a quite confused action showcasing more deflections than a pinball would. So it ends in a draw leaving both teams at the bottom of the rankings, Sampdoria at 1 point and Lazio at 2. Maybe this will finally be Inter's season to shine, under new coach Giampiero Piovani? This is the kind of games you only win if you have quality, concentration and grit: despite some offensive actions by the Neroazzurre, Napoli had scored first in the additional time of the 1st Half, through a Corner-Kick action spectacularly finished by Marija Banusic. Inter was patient and completely turned the tables in the last 20 minutes of the match by scoring a whopping 4 goals: Michela Cambiaghi opened the floodgates with her equalizer, that was followed by goals by newly-signed Belgian star Tessa Wullaert and by Annamaria Serturini; an own-goal by Matllde Lundorf from the rebound of an Elisa Polli's shot that had been saved by Doris Bačić settled the score at 88'. Now there are three teams with a perfect record after two match-days: Juventus, Fiorentina and Inter (who have the best goal difference of the three, having won their games by 5-0 and 4-1), while Roma is way behind at the moment. Napoli share the last place, at 0 points, with Milan. Recap of today's scores: Sampdoria 1-1 Lazio Napoli 1-4 Inter Since we're now at the second match-day it's the case of introducing the rankings of Serie A Femminile (as usual, goal difference and goals scored are in brackets): Inter 6 (+8, 9 goals scored) Juventus 6 (+5, 10 goals scored) Fiorentina 6 (+2, 3 goals scored) Como 3 (-1, 3 goals scored) Lazio 2 (0, 3 goals scored) Roma 2 (0, 3 goals scored) Sassuolo 1 (-3, 4 goals scored) Sampdoria 1 (-5, 1 goal scored) Milan 0 (-2, 1 goal scored) Napoli 0 (-4, 1 goal scored) Since not many direct clashes happened so far, I mostly used goal difference or goals scored as a tie-breaker; in the case of Roma and Lazio, the direct clash happened, but it was a draw and the teams had identical scores in their other match also, so I just used alphabetical order. I don't even know what's the subsequent tie-breaker: probably disciplinary record? Highlights-videos (once again, with no replays ):
The following criteria are applied (in order from top to bottom) to determine the order of the teams in all rounds of the league: Total number of points; Total number of points obtained in head-to-head matches; Goal difference in all league matches; Number of goals scored in all league matches; Number of goals scored in head-to-head matches; Number of away goals scored in head-to-head matches In caso di arrivo di due o più squadre a pari punti, la graduatoria verrà stilata secondo la classifica avulsa tra le squadre interessate che prevede, in ordine, i seguenti criteri: Punti negli scontri diretti Differenza reti negli scontri diretti Differenza reti generale Reti realizzate in generale Sorteggio Have English and Italian Wiki different criteria?
Yes and a fighter like Cambiaghi . Inter looks very physical , big and mean, will be interesting to see a "cute" team like Roma face off against them.
I am watching the beginning of the match, but I'll sadly miss the most of it. We're at about 20' and still 0-0. I should be able to entirely watch the evening matches, though (despite the overlap between them), and I am especially curious about Fiorentiba vs Wolfsburg.
I am back home and I have to say that the game would have probably made me nervous, but the final result would have anyway left me satisfied: 3-1 at home is a decent margin for the second leg. So, I would have had no objections to watching the match live, if I hadn't had work's committment already scheduled for this afternoon. I anyway followed the "live-ticker" on the women's Champions' League's thread her on BigSoccer and I found some short video-highlights on Roma's YouTube channel, that I hope aren't geoblocked outside of Italy: It's quite clear, by now, that Roma's scoring problem, that was already obvious last season, has become even worse at the beginning of this season: Roma are struggling in the first match-days of the domestic league and even this Champion's League's match was apparently quite difficult despite Roma's dominance (19 shots to 6) just because of the low converting-ratio for the home team. After Moeka Minami had scored in the first half and Cassandra Korhonen had equalized early in the second half for the Swiss with a frankly avoidable lob, a late brace by Evelyne Viens (at 84' and 90'+3') was needed to get the win and to shore up the score in a quite reassuring way. I can't help wondering, though, if this limping is just the result of a lack of conditioning or if Roma are indeed weaker than last season.
Juventus-PSG starting in about 10 minutes (available on Juventus' YouTube channel, although probably just in Italy ). Starting line-ups: Juventus: Peyraud-Magnin; Lenzini, Calligaris, Cascarino; Bergamaschi, Caruso (C), Bennison, Krumbiegel; Cantore, Vangsgaard, Beccari. Coach: Canzi. PSG: Earps; De Almeida, Mbock Bathy, Dudek (C), Elimbi Gilbert; Samoura, Geyoro, Fazer; Echegini, Katoto, Leutcher. Coach: Abriel I have a bad feeling about this.
Amalie Vangsgaard scores at 7'! Paulina Krumbiegel started the action, Sofia Cantore ran on the Right-Side and perfectly assisted the Danish striker. At the moment former PSG's striker was better that former Juventus' striker (Echegini).
Meanwhile, Fiorentina-Wolfsburg's starting line-ups (the game will start at 20:00, available on Fiorentina's official website): FIORENTINA (4-2-3-1): Fiskerstrand; Faerge, Filangeri, Tortelli, Toniolo; Johannsdottir, Severini; Bonfantini, Boquete, Janogy; Catena. Coach.: De La Fuente. WOLFSBURG (4-4-2): Frohms; Wilms, Hendrich, Hegering, Linder; Huth, Minge, Lattwein, Brand; Beerensteyn, Popp. Coach.: Stroot.
Meanwhile, Sofia Cantore scores at 34' : one goal and one assist for her in ths 1st Half so far. And Juve is ahead again.