Two 3-1 wins for Italy, and a 0-1.000.000 loss. The overall count of this day of home-matches is sure positive for Italy, but frankly I expected at the very least a better showing for Fiorentina: there could have been different ways than that to lose a match.
This Fiorentina's match, if anything, was useful to make me aware (by hearing the comment and reading the bench-list) of a market move that happened just 5 days ago, on the 13th of September, and that I had completely missed so far! There was a GK's exchange between Inter and Fiorentina, so now Rachele Baldi in on loan to Inter while Francesca Durante signed for Fiorentina. Both probably felt like they were blocked in their respective clubs by the newly signed GKs from Iceland and Norway, but it doesn't seem like this move changed much for anyone of them. We're going to see if they're going to get any significant playing time: for sure, if Durante was hoping to find space in the Champions' League, she will feel disappointed.
On an evening like this one, these are of course meaningless details, but I wonder why Sofie Bredgaard didn't start for Fiorentina: she looks like the only Fiorentina's player who could be mildly dangerous.
Ok, at least one thing is worth being said: the few supporters that faced an endless rainstorm to come at the stadium to watch this match never stopped encouraging the team and are now applauding the players. This is one of the things I like most about women's football (as opposed to men's football and its often awful and disgraceful supporters).
DAZN's extended highlights in English from Juventus-PSG; the headline celebrates Sofia Cantore and quite rightfully so, considering her goal and her two assists (although the second one was actually tarnished by a PSG's DF's deflection ):
Some quick thoughts on the games: Roma-: Very bad from Roma and as you said @blissett Roma got attacking problems. I feel part of the problem is that Haavis age is catching up, allthough I think she's also slightly injured or something, and she's kinda been the engine for Roma attack since she arrived, so problems... Hope I'm wrong though. Also Giacinti feels like she's getting more and more uneven, but maybe it is just because of lack of service.. Lastly about Roma's attack problem I think Glionna needs to leave, for her own sake, she has kinda stalled at Roma, just getting some games here and there. I feel her confidence is pretty low, I would like to see her go somewhere else in january.. On the other hand Alice Corelli has been a real nice surprise this season, like her much! Hope Spugna tries to play Corelli-Viens-Dragoni next time, it felt a lot fresher than what Roma started with. Juve-game-: Possibly the best game I seen by an italian womens team ever. The games Juve did 21/22-season were great but it always felt they had to fight for survival, while this display almost felt dominant. They really looked like they belonged at the internatiol stage. So many good players from this game, but Cantore was the best and I adore Krumbriegel, so strong and elegant! Should be said though that PSG is still very early in the season, should be a lot stronger PSG in the return. Fiorentina.game: 0-7, no comment needed, except what blissett said about their lovely fans
Actually Valentina Giacinti has always been quite wasteful: she masks it with the fact that she actually always scores a lot anyway, but what's irritating about her is that she sometimes scores goals that she'd have no business scoring by some spectacular skills and at the same time she almost as much often misses shots that she would be definitely supposed to convert. Anyway, no doubt that she's a strong striker on the domestic scene and probably she's very good at the international level to, but converting-ratio has never been her thing: you will always see her failing to frame quite obvious chances. I wonder if Roma aren't somehow missing Elisa Bartoli, since she trasferred to Inter. You'll say that she didn't have much to do with scoring chances (although she was always pushing on her side and she was regularly dangerous in the box from CK actions) and you'll point out that she's 33 and she sometimes showed last season that it was difficult for her to keep up with the speed of much younger FWs, but I guess her captaincy gave something special to the team in terms of character. Now the captain is Manuela Giugliano (I wonder why not Elena Linari, who already has this role in the National Team) and, don't get me wrong, she's a fantastic player, but I am not sure she's the best-suited one to wear the armband. Also, I agree that, although young, Giulia Dragoni should be involved more. She's been one of the top market-moves from Roma, this summer: let's make it count! I agree that PSG will be surely stronger later along the season, but I hope they won't be in time to show it in the Champions' League! After all, the second leg is in just one week: how much further can they go in their conditioning in just one week? (Crossing fingers anyway, even the toes ).
As a final note about this game, I am going to post video-highlights from it (it looks like an apt tribute that they come from Wolfsburg's YouTube channel ). As you correctly point out, @dravde, no need to comment on any of the single players' performances, that were basically all beyond awful.
Agree totaly about Giacinti and Giugliano. Giacinti do monster things, like high international class striker things often and then she can be really wasteful.. Feels like she doesn't always wake up in the right mood for a game. Her up and down reminds me a bit about Bonansea, but ofc Bonanseas low lasted for quite a lot longer than Giacinti is more from game to game.The opposite of these players is ofc Girelli who always soldiers on.. Giugliano as a captain is a bit odd yes, she seems a bit too introverted. Agree Linari feels like the natural choice or Ceasar or even Di Guglielmo who i get the feeling likes to communicate, hehe. Roma sure needs Pilgrim back btw, do you know when it will happen?
Alayah Pilgrim recently posted on some of her social network that she can't wait to come back, but I can't actually find anything about when she's supposed to join the team...
It's a sad story: when Pomigliano didn't subscribe to Serie B this season, it looked like it was "just" a question of financial covering, but what's surfacing in these last hours is shaping it as a story of abuse against players. In the past seasons, the management of the team had seemed quite "peculiar" in some of their choices (endless changing of coaches, that often resulted in calling back a coach that had been previously sacked along the season; threats to retire the club from the league after what had been seen as a questionable refereeing...), but, despite the umpredictble nature of these behaviours, there didn't seem to be anything malicious directed against the players; or, at least, no-one seemed to be talking about that. On the contrary, the club, at times, looked like one who used to gave value to young players or to little-known players from overseas: it appears now that they were exploiting them instead. Or course, there must have been some kind of code of silence covering all that, because I never heard before any of the allegations that are now being revealed, apart from the fact that there had been recurring rumours about the club's financial problems (that had anyway everytime be denied by the club, who had even threatened legal actions about that). On the other hand, quite some level of collusion was surely needed, at least at the local scale, to manage to hide so egregious conducts.
Juventus finally uploaded video-highlights of the Champions' League's game on their YouTube channel; it could be worth watching it to compare the voice of the announcer when Juventus score or when PSG score. Some additional observations about this match: this summer's signings, Valentina Bergamaschi and Paulina Krumbiegel, looked very effective in starting the offensive action from their respective sides. This is normally Lisa Boattin's job, but at the moment she's out injured: it's impressive that Juventus can do so well without who's arguable one of their top-players! The other observation is not about a Juve's players, it's about PSG's one: although just 29, Griedge 'Mbock Bathy looks way past her prime and it was sad to see her in a so bad shape. She was clearly beaten in speed and then ruthlessly nutmegged by Sofia Cantore in the action of Juventus' 2nd goal and then she awkwardly deflected the ball on Hanna Bennison's feet in the box in the action of the 3rd goal. She used to be one of the absolut top CBs of French women's football, but she suffered two almost career-ending injuries in the last years and the fact that OL let her go to PSG, in my opinion, it's a sign that they weren't seeing her ever being back at her top-level. She was cruelly exposed in the match vs Juventus and I repeat, it is sad, because she has been a so good player in the past!
An unusual Friday match to start the 3rd match-day of Serie A Femminile. The match between Napoli and Sassuolo was quite even, or even a little slant towards Sassuolo, who had some more chances, hit the woodwork in the 1st Half and had some quite active players as Gina Chmielinski, who took most of the set pieces for her team and was dangerous on multiple occasions, but in the end everything was decided by the early incredible goal by Debora Novellino, at 2': she received the ball from a throw-in at about 30 m from the goal on an outer position on the right-side and she volleyed in what became an unsavable lob. Awesome but quite random (if she did that "completely" expressely, let's call her up to the National Team ). Anyway, she gave Napoli their first win of the season (along with their first points). A not trivial note, after yesterday's news: Debora Novellino was a Pomigliano's player in the last two seasons. Let's hope she didn't have to suffer too much for what happened at that team, but there is anyway one more reason to be happy for her goal of today. Today's match: Napoli 1-0 Sassuolo Highlights:
You can see this Napoli team is run by the same guy that run Sampdoria last season. Tight, ugly and fighting is what categorize his football. I reacted to Sampdoria's stats when he managed them, cause he always had extremly low pass accuracy, by far the lowest in the league with about 50 percent pass accuracy. I looked up Napolis stats since I heard he was coaching them and yes, it was about 50 percent accuracy know as well. It seems anyway to give good results in comparision to his material and to be fair, as I watched the game it didn't look as ugly as I ecxpected. They might surprise, cause they are hard to score against,like Samp last season. Inter just started scoring in the last 20 min and went from 0-1 to 4-1 and Fiorentina just managed one goal against them.
Another game today (the final 3 ones of the match-day being scheduled for tomorrow ). Juventus have beaten PSG midweek, but they risked falling to Lazio: of course Champions' League can drain a lot of physical and mental energy from a team, but Lazio have been very good anyway. Juventus had gone ahead early with Eva Schatzer, but Lazio equalized later in the 1st Half with Eleonora Goldoni. Then, if it wasn't for woodwork and for some miraculous save by Pauline Peyraud-Magnin, the Roman team could have taken the lead (with Noemi Visentin and again Eleonora Goldoni in particular slinging the most dangerous in shot). In the end, though, it was Sofia Cantore, who had been subbed-in in the last half-hour only (probably to keep her rested for the upcoming return match vs PSG), who broke the spell with a volley-lob at 84': there are players having magical moments, when everything they touch turn to gold; it looks like Cantore hit one of these moments. So Juventus keep their perfect record, but it sure wasn't easy. Funny trivia: when Sofia Cantore replaces Alisha Lehmann, the caption on the screen reads "Aliscia Lehmann", that's a funny phonetic transcript in Italian of the Swiss striker's first name. I even suspect that it could have been done expressely, to offer to her something to talk about on her social media (where she already famously wrote "Ciao Bianconeri, come stai?", an obvious grammar mistake in Italian that somehow made her popular). Today's match: Lazio 1-2 Juventus Highlights (have I already mentioned how much I dislike that video-highlights don't have replays? ):
The correct form would be: "Ciao Bianconeri, come state?", since Bianconeri is a plural noun and the verb needs to be changed accordingly. In a recent interview, Alisha Lehmann mentioned that, after she had posted that line on her social media at her arrival in Turin, everyone she was meeting was greeting her by a "Ciao Bianconeri, come stai?" followed by having a good laugh. She was laughing in response, but only several days later she realized that they were laughing at her grammar mistake. Even when told about that mistake, she kept on with her "Ciao Bianconeri, come stai?", that became some kind of a catchphrase. Here you can see Cristiana Girelli playing along with her: pic.twitter.com/1vSRhZPiiM— JGiuve (@JGiuve) August 11, 2024
After two consecutive draws in the first two match-days, this was a game to win at all costs for Roma, lest they fall too much behind too much early in the title race. And anyway Como scored first, at 23', with a Julia Karlernäs' header from a Corner-Kick that had been taken by 18 yo Zara Kramžar, on loan to Como from Roma, who will be a constant danger to her owner-team for all the length of the game. As in the Champions' League's game vs Servette, though, Evelyne Viens came to the rescue, and once again with a brace: these days, the Canadian striker is keeping Roma alive. Later, in the 2nd Half, the score was led out of reach for Como through a shot by Sanne Troelsgaard that was deflected in her own goal by GK Astrid Gilardi (thus being deemed as an own-goal). Roma are sure far from their perfect form, but they finally find the win in the league also. Como sure remain a good team. The rivalry between Inter and Milan AC in the derby of Milan is always very strong: Inter entered the game as the favourites, with their 6 points in two game vs the 0 points of their rivals, and in fact they seemed to dominate the game since the beginning, but a combination of a lot of woodwork (basically the whole frame of the goal! ) and of some good saves by Laura Giuliani (whose only longtime weakness is playing with her feet) kept Milan alive for long. When Tessa Wullaert scored at 77' from an assist by Haley Bugeja, who had just replaced Lina Magull two minutes earlier (the German had anyway being very dangerous all game, including some excellent Free-Kicks), it looked like it was game over for Milan. But, unexpectedly, at 87', they equalized with an Emelyne Laurent's header from a CK action, and that was the final score. Inter were too wasteful to be true and lost the top of the rankings to Juventus and Fiorentina. Milan find their first point of the season, but it looked quite random and it sure doesn't solve Suzanne Bakker's team problems. As anticipated in the previous report, Fiorentina rolled back to win in style in the domestic league after the depressing Champions' League's mid-week night vs Wolfsburg. They squarely defeated Sampdoria through an indisputable 4-0 score with braces by Madalen Janogy and Agnese Bonfantini, and with Vero Boquete dribbling and slinging dreamlike assists like a world-beater. Of course Serie A Femminile is much more comfortable than the international stage and even there Sampdoria is a mid-lower team at best, but the Viola needed this confidence-boost and they showed that they can at least be contenders for the title here in Italy. Today's results: Como 1-3 Roma Inter 1-1 Milan Fiorentina 4-0 Sampdoria The rankings (with goal difference and goals scored in brackets): Juventus 9 (+6, 12 goals scored) Fiorentina 9 (+6, 7 goals scored) Inter 7 (+8, 10 goals scored) Roma 5 (+2, 6 goals scored) Como 3 (-3, 4 goals scored) Napoli 3 (-3, 2 goal scored) Lazio 2 (-1, 4 goals scored) Milan 1 (-2, 2 goal scored) Sassuolo 1 (-4, 4 goals scored) Sampdoria 1 (-9, 1 goal scored) Highlights (I somehow understand the deal: no replays, so more actions can be shown; why not both, though? ):