Roma actually paid LSK more for Sophie Haug than for Haavi, but age difference plays a major part of course. No sum was revealed, but LSK announced this signing on their website as the biggest transfer fee for the club ever. Haug is 22, Haavi nearly 30. Haug is an old fashioned centre-forward. Powerful presence in the box, physically strong, good in the air, but not the quickest. Needs service from the wings to be efficient. Still uncapped at senior level for Norway, but 60 goals in 130 appearances for LSK in all competitions. Will be interesting to see how she deals with Italian football.
Serie A Femminile came back with a match-day sandwiched in-between the two legs of Coppa Italia's quarter-finals (scheduled for last week-end and next week-end). It's a particular week, because it's mostly made of top-bottom clashes, with very few expectations of upsets, since by now the league has been more or less splitted in two halves, or, better, in about three parts, with the 5 teams still competing for the title or for at least a Champions' League spot, 3 middle-of-the-rankings teams and the 4 teams involved in the relegation battle or virtually already relegated. No-one expects the top 5 teams to lose many points in the rest of the season beyond direct clashes, but today Pomigliano at least managed to give Roma a run for their money, since they went ahead early in the game and, when they went behind just before HT they anyway managed to immediately equalized at the beginning of 2nd Half with the surprising new American signing Tori Dellaperuta (at her second goal already, although she scored both coming from the bench: now, what about starting her? ). They ended up losing by 5-2, but they sure made it anyway quite interesting. Guess who came to Roma's rescue? But of course Emilie Haavi, with two goals and one assist today. As I already wrote multiple times, hands down the most relevant season-changer signing we've seen during this season (only Inter's Cameroonian FW can compare). Paloma Lázaro also had another brace after the one she scored in Coppa Italia's match last week-end. Roma extend their winning-streak in the league to 8 consecutive wins: it's a shame that Italy still has just 2 Champions' League spots, because there is more than one team who would deserve joining Juventus in Europe next season. I've jumped to the most interesting match of today, but actually the afternoon had begun with a Milan's wins vs Lazio that also wasn't as easy as it could have seemed on paper or as the final 3-1 score would suggest. It started in the fog (I live in Milan and I can confirm that by this morning an enormous bank was envelopping the whole town ) and Lazio scored early at 7'. The equalizer arrived later in 1st Half and it was once again wrapped-up by the connection between Alia Guagni and Martina Piemonte. Talking about season-changing signing, the winger from Florence makes you want to see her back in NT as soon as possible: I can't wait to see her in action at Algarve Cup; while Piemonte was literally revitalized by the transfer at Milan: 3 goals in 6 matches between the league, Supercoppa and Coppa Italia and today she also had the assist for Nina Stapelfeldt's late winner at 88' (before Thrige Andersen made it 3-1 in additional time). It's good that Milan found some different scorers, because Lindsey Thomas had come back to her old habit of wasting shots on an open goal. It was super-important to grab this late win, because, as mentioned above, all the rivals in the fight for the Champions' League spot are winning, so Maurizio Ganz's side absolutely needed to keep the pace of the other teams. Sassuolo's win, although in an away match vs a respectable team as Sampdoria, was the most comfortable one of today: 17 yo Maltese baby-star Haley Bugeja scored at 2' already from an assist by Serie A's current top-scorer Lana Clelland. Then Sassuolo unleashed the rest of their offense-line of wonders, with Sofia Cantore first assisting Czech Kamila Dubcová and then scoring herself with a technical masterpiece. Sassuolo ended 1st Half ahead by 0-3 and 2nd Half, despite a goal for Sampdoria (who has anyway some impressive offensive players in Colombian Yoreli Rincón and Guatemalan Ana Lucía Martínez) and a RC for Sassuolo's Alice Benoît, was just a formality. The power of Giampiero Piovani's young forward-line is undeniable and, although a little shaky in 2nd Half, the holding-line is as much solid. Sassuolo has found an interesting mix of an Italian backbone and undervalued international talent from around the world (Malta, Belgium, Japan, Czech Republic, Scotland, Germany...). Their depth is maybe a little less than their direct rivals', but if they don't run into major inuries, they can still look like the favourite for the 2nd-place, although they're now sharing it with Roma, who aren't missing a beat since they signed Haavi. Today's recap: Milan 3-1 Lazio Sampdoria 1-3 Sassuolo Roma 5-2 Pomigliano Highlights:
Sad to see her go, but Mille (Millica Mijatovic) joins her Häcken teammate Beata Kolmats at Roma making her the 14th Häcken player to leave Sweden this past year. Apparently she didn't fit into the manager's plans for the team. Hope she can help Roma out.
If yesterday all games had gone as expected, today there was a big upset! Or, better: by just reading the chart, it shouldn't look like a big upset at all, since Fiorentina are sitting at a disappointing 8th place, so it shouldn't surprise so much that they lose to the 10th-placed team, but too many times it's been said that Fiorentina should actually be fighting for the top positions and their lavish winter-market, that even led to tying Juventus in the previous match-day, strengthened this illusion. But an illusion it is, an Napoli unmasked it by beating Firenze's team by 0-2 at their home: by now, Fiorentina's position in the rankings can't be considered a coincidence anymore; they'd better start to accept it and to care about the fight to avoid relegation (with today's result, they only have a 3 points advantage over Napoli ). The other matches of today went more or less as expected, but they weren't anyway "easy" wins: Inter went 3-0 early in 1st Half over a desperate Empoli (who now can feel Napoli at their heels, just one point behind! ), but they ended up having to defend a 3-2 score in additional time. They have to thank not only their offensive players (Tatiana Bonetti, who's now at 8 goals in the league, Ayara Nchout Njoya who scored her 6th, Ghoutia Karchouni, a 5th goal for her), but also their GK Francesca Durante (who was back at her starting place, and for a reason, after Astrid Gilardi had replaced her in Coppa Italia's match last week). Juventus are now officially in some kind of a crisis, that after all is reasonable in the middle of a long and very demanding season. The good news are that they anyway managed to enter "damage control"-mode and to post a measly 0-1 win away in Verona (the tail-end team of Serie A, with their lonely single point in 14 match-days), thus keeping their 6 point advantage at the top over Roma and Sassuolo, but they needed an opponent's own-goal and a top-save by their 2nd GK who was starting today, Roberta Aprile, who managed to deflect a venomous FK by usual suspect Lineth Cedeño that had been awarded for a foul that left the bianconere with 10 players for the last half-hour of the game, since Anahita Zamanian was sent-off with a double Yellow Card. Looking at the bright side, Juventus started Linda Sembrant, who played until 85' and seems to be on the way of fully recovering her pre-injury fitness. She will sure be needed in the next months. Also, it's not like they didn't created any chance: it was more a combination of bad finishing by Juventus' FWs (Cristiana Girelli, who just recovered from covid, was still unavailable) and some more than decent saves by Norwegian GK Benedicte Haaland, that was preferred to Fanny Keizer today (looks like Verona is experimenting a lot with their goalkeepers, lately). Recap of today's results Fiorentina 0-2 Napoli Inter 3-2 Empoli Hellas Verona 0-1 Juventus These are the updated rankings Juventus 40 Sassuolo 34 Roma 34 Milan 31 Inter 29 Sampdoria 19 Pomigliano 16 Fiorentina 14 Empoli 12 Napoli 11 Lazio 3 Hellas Verona 1 and these are the highlights:
Next week-end the 2nd leg of Coppa Italia's quarter-finals will be played. Meanwhile, Milena Bertolini's list for Algarve Cup (that will take place from 16th to 23rd of February) has been published by FIGC. Since this is by tradition an all-inclusive Italian women's football thread, including National Teams, I will briefly comment these calls; this is the full 25-players list: Goalkeepers: Rachele Baldi (Napoli Femminile), Francesca Durante (Inter), Laura Giuliani (Milan); Defenders: Valentina Bergamaschi (Milan), Lisa Boattin (Juventus), Lucia Di Guglielmo (Roma), Sara Gama (Juventus), Alia Guagni (Milan), Martina Lenzini (Juventus), Elena Linari (Roma), Benedetta Orsi (Sassuolo), Giulia Rizzon (Como Women), Angelica Soffia (Roma); Midfielders: Arianna Caruso (Juventus), Valentina Cernoia (Juventus), Aurora Galli (Everton), Manuela Giugliano (Roma), Martina Rosucci (Juventus), Flaminia Simonetti (Inter); Attackers: Barbara Bonansea (Juventus), Sofia Cantore (Sassuolo), Valentina Giacinti (Fiorentina), Cristiana Girelli (Juventus), Martina Piemonte (Milan), Annamaria Serturini (Roma) It shouldn't surprised anyone that Alia Guagni is back in the team, after what I wrote here of her performances in this last month and after AIC (Italian Football Players' Association) voted her best female player of the month in Janaury. Valentina Cernoia and Aurora Galli are also back from injuries that had left them out from the previous NT camps, while Cristiana Girelli, who just recovered from covid (thus not deemed fit to play last Juventus' league match), has anyway been called to NT. There are actually two or three interesting new names in this selection: the first one is Martina Piemonte (who had gathered a handful caps for the Senior Team when she was still an U-19 player, but hadn't been called since 2016, when Antonio Cabrini was at the helm); she had been very promising at youth level (including being part of the Bronze-Medal team at U-17 WWC 2014), but she had somehow lost herself in Spain and then at Fiorentina. She finally looked like her older self at Milan in the last month and gave a valuable contribution (not only with just goals) to this good part of the season by Maurizio Ganz's side. Another relevant comeback is GK Rachele Baldi, who recently gave a turn to her career by passing from sitting on the bench at Roma to being the starter in a Napoli team that's chasing the permanence in Serie A in a quite convincing way. She had been called in the past, but she actually hasn't any caps yet. The other name (and that was really unexpected) is Giulia Rizzon, from the team that's currently leading Serie B and reached the quarter finals of Coppa Italia, Como. Competent defenders are always a luxury, so you take them wherever you find them, but I like being showed that obviously Bertolini is attentively looking at 2nd Division also, when she has to select the team: a very professional approach that I appreciate even more if I consider that even people like me, who use to follow Italian women's league with quite some interest, can't often help looking at Serie B as an afterthought, despite the fact that, starting from next season, Serie A's reduction to just 10 teams will forcibly move a lot of talent to the lower divisions. All in all, the calls for the Algarve Cup look like a good mix of experience and youth (although mostly a quite established youth, by now). We're going to see how we will fare vs basically Scandinavia + Portugal, since this is what this tournament seems to be about these days. In other news, U-17 Italian NT Have just beaten Estonia by 8-1, in preparation of their very difficult European group vs Netherlands, Portugal and Montenegro, that will be played in March.
Honestly don’t know how good are the U-17 teams. Does European teams have actual U-20 teams? Or do they just send in U-19 teams to U-20 WC.
Different between countries, and may be different during different years for the same country. Sweden for example currently on the female side have U23,U19*,U18*,U17*,U16* and U15*. So at the moment no U20. *All U team less than 20 are denoted F for 'flickor'=girls or P for 'pojkar'=boys since the Swedish FA do not use U for children and consider the players children until they play in U20 or higher age class.
I guess they normally send to U-20 WWC the U-19 NTs from previous year's cycle, but I could be wrong. Not too much informed about it.
The UEFA teams that go the U-20 World Cup in year Y are the teams that have qualified via the U-19 Euros in year Y-1. So it is just the natural continuity of the U-19 team. Depending on countries, but you can find U-15 teams, U-16 teams who take part in the UEFA development tournaments. U-17 do the Euros, U-18 teams also exist. U-19 take parts into the Euros. U-20 go the the World Cup. Some countries have a U-21 team others have a U-23 team, some have none and players have to wait until they are good enough for the senior team.
For some reason this didn't ping my notification at the time and just found this doing a word search. I am not a good lip reader, but otec is Czech for father, although tata / tatinek are more common familiar forms (sort of how in English its rare to address your father as "father" but rather dad(dy) or poppa). Papa exists in Czech as well, though less common than tata. Not sure who she is dedicating the goal to, but glad she's having success.
Thanks: only way to know would actually be asking her, but I am grateful for the Czech language lesson!
Two games from the 2nd leg of Coppa Italia's quarter-finals have been played today; the other two will be played tomorrow. Once again (as I basically have to repeat what I wrote after the last League's match-day), can we really talk about "shock-result" if Fiorentina has been eliminated by Empoli? Is it a surprise after the 0-0 draw in the 1st leg from two weeks ago? Can it be considered an upset if the currently 8th-placed of Serie A can't go beyond a 2-2 draw against the 9th-placed one and misses out on the semi-final on away-goals count? Despite the hopes their new signings had raised, this is basically the same Fiorentina that had started the season: one-dimensional, wasteful, only carried-on by veteran striker Daniela Sabatino, who managed to score a brace today to equalize the initial chilling 0-2 for Empoli, but couldn't actually finish the job alone. Since they've lost (today's draw + elimination can basically count as a loss) two back-to-back games to their main rivals in the relegation battle, Napoli and Empoli (although this last one "just" in Coppa Italia), Fiorentina's players will need to quickly set their minds to a tooth-and-nail fight to avoid relegation, or they're going to lose it despite their roster. Oh, and coach Patrizia Panico doesn't look in a very good shape right now (It's a shame, because she was a great player). Meanwhile, congratulations to Empoli Women for their historical and well-deserved first semi-final of Coppa Italia (that will most probably be vs AS Roma). The other match ended with the exact same result from the 1st leg, since Milan have once again beaten Sampdoria by 4-1 (no doubt about which team was going to advance, here). A cynical observer could probably praise coach Maurizio Ganz for what could have initially looked like a risky move: there is no doubt that Vero Boquete and Valentina Giacinti are great players, but they were arguably slightly underperforming at Milan AC in the first half of the season and they had become troublemakers in the locker-room (at least in Ganz's eyes). He got rid of both of them and, since they left, you can see them not being particularly helpful to Fiorentina (once again Giacinti missed today a quite easy chance for a striker of her caliber), while Milan keep scoring with umpteen different players, including supposed bench-warmers, as Swiss Nina Stapelfeldt (who scored one last week vs Lazio and one today vs Sampdoria) or young Miriam Longo (a brace for her today). Looks like, at least for the moment, Ganz emerged the winner from this contest. Recap of today's matches: Fiorentina 2-2 Empoli (aggregate: 2-2; tie-breaker: 2 away-goals for Empoli) Milan 4-1 Sampdoria (aggregate: 8-2) Highlights:
Last two matches of the quarter-finals of Coppa Italia were played today and now the semi-finals are set up. Despite being (at the moment) a 2nd Division team and despite having lost the 1st leg by 0-3, Como were not intimidated at all and came to Roma to take their chances, to the point that they even scored early at 6' with Estonian striker Vlada Kubassova, while their GK Giorgia Bettineschi seemed seriously intentioned to save the impossible. In the end, though, their inexperience showed up, since they took a goal twice from Corner-Kick actions, so Roma were comfortably back leading before HT and the match basically ended here. It was a Swedish-flavoured Roma today, with Emma Lind starting in goal and Beata Kollmats complementing Elena Linari as a Center-Back. But, of course, the most important Scandinavian in the team keeps being Emilie Haavi, who once again scored (with an header) in 1st Half and hit the crossbar in 2nd Half. It's also very important that Valeria Pirone and especially Elisa Bartoli were back on the pitch after their injuries: in this second part of the season, Roma will sure need the goals from the former and the powerful combo of defense-offense on the wing from the latter (and both could help Italy NT also). Juventus-Inter was confirmed to be a close affair. There were two wonderful volleys by high-quality strikers in the 1st Half today, one per team: the difference was that Francesca Durante (who was anyway excellent for the rest of the match) couldn't save Barbara Bonansea's one, while Pauline Peyroud-Magnin made some sort of a miracle on Tatiana Bonetti's shot. Sure, Juventus legitimated their win by constantly attacking for the whole 2nd Half, but the difference between the two teams was a question of details and the final 2-1 aggregate result can leave some regrets to former Juventus' coach Rita Guarino, especially considering how her team took that equalizer in additional time in Milan two weeks ago. Juventus are still alive and fighting in all of their competitions, Serie A Femminile, Coppa Italia and Uefa Women's Champions' League, so it's important that, step by step, they're recovering all of their missing player: Cristiana Girelli was subbed-in in 2nd Half today, while Linda Sembrant started and played the whole game. They will be needed later along the season, since Juventus' schedule will sure be very demanding. Recap of today's matches: Roma 2-1 Como (aggregate: 5-1) Juventus 1-0 Inter (aggregate: 2-1) Semi-finals (to be played with two legs way far from each other, on the week-ends of 12th/13th of March and of 30th of April/1st of May! Women's football's schedule is becoming quite busy in Italy too?) Roma-Empoli Milan-Juventus (basically a repeat of the Supercoppa's final) Highlights:
Nice to see that Sembrant got in a whole match. And I guess it was a bit too early to see Milica Mijatovic in the Roma squad.
These reports are better than the ones by the federation! Translate them to Italiano, and email them in.....
In fact the signing of Serbian MF Milica Mijatovic was only officially announced one week ago, on 6th of February: it was really early to see her on the pitch. By the way, she replaces Brazilian Thaisa Moreno, who hadn't had much playing time this season, and I am not sure she's considered a starter either, since, with most of the injured players being back, Roma could even have some over-abundance problems right now (despite being still able to spend playing-time on two different competitions), but we're going to see.
Giulia Rizzon's call was looking like the most new and interesting one from the Algarve Cup's roster, but it wasn't destined to be! Como's DF was stopped by a muscle-injury that had her skip the Coppa Italia's match vs Roma and, especially, the trip to Portugal. At her place, Roma's offensive MF/winger Benedetta Glionna has been called.
The "slightly Italian sounding last name" plot had an interesting twist. Tori Dellaperuta didn't even turn 18 yet (she will in March) and apparently, after her brilliant debut in Serie A Femminile with two (beautiful!) goals in just a handful of minutes played, Italian federation decided to take advantage of her double password, thus making the "Italian" part of her being Italian-American count: Enrico Sbardella, coach of the U-19 National Team (and former coach of the U-17 National Team, that he led to un unprecedented 3rd place at U-17 WWC 2014 in Costa Rica) called Dellaperuta for a training camp in preparation for the qualifier group to the U-19 Euro Championship (that will be concluded by a friendly match vs U-19 Belgium NT). Our U-19 team looks solid already (as they showed by battling against Norway to gain the seeded-team status at this stage), but a good young prospect as Dellaperuta could make it even better. So I guess it's a good idea to snatch her from USWNT!
Milica didn't get that many starts in the year she spent with Häcken. She would come on as a second-half sub and rejuvenate the offense with her energy. Häcken let her go with a half-year left on her contract as the new coach didn't see her in his immediate plans so it will be interesting to see how she fits into Romas plans.
Impressive first match for Italy at Algarve, as they have beaten by 0-1 Denmark, a team that had given Italy a lot of problems in the Euro-2022 qualifiers, where they had taken 4 points out of 6 available from the Azzurre. The winner was scored by Barbara Bonansea at 50'; it is although possible that it wasn't Denmark's best possible line-up, since I read that they left Pernille Harder sitting on the bench all time. I am not going to elaborate more, at the moment, nor to post highlights or such, because I've missed the game live and I plan to watch the replay on Italian TV this evening. In other news, Sampdoria just signed former Slovenian Milan's MF Dominika Čonč, who had left Italy this summer to join Valencia and is now back in our country. I remember her as a solid player, she will surely help out Sampdoria to reach their by now quite easy target of avoiding relegation.
I watched the Denmark-Italy match (highlights below) and I have to say that, as I already wrote on the Algarve thread, as unexciting as the game was the win was sure deserved. Denmark showed a quite depleted team (no Nadim longtime out with ACL, no Harder, no Pedersen) and their 3-women defense, at least in 2nd Half (1st Half was a snooze festival with teams effectively controlling each other in the midfield and no real shot apart a pair of completely out of target middle-range attempts by Italy ), looked quite vulnerable to our Wingers supported by our Full-Backs: Anna Maria Serturini and Lisa Boattin on the left-side and especially Valentina Bergamaschi and Alia Guagni on the right-side; by the way, Serturini and Guagni were 2nd Half replacements For Barbara Bonansea and Sara Gama and they seemed to click quite well with the rest of the team (of course, when Guagni replaced Gama, versatile Martina Lenzini, who had started the game as a Right-Back, moved into a Center-Back position alongside Benedetta Orsi, who will just turn 22 next week but had a solid debut in Senior National Team yesterday ). Anyway, as I mentioned, if it probably wasn't a full-force Denmark, Italy deployed a quite experiemental line-up also: Martina Piemonte wasn't actually debuting, but it felt like a debut, since she was missing from Senior NT since the times when she was a fixture of Youth Teams also (while right now she's 24): she exploited her powerful physical build (she's 1,80 m/70 Kg) to defend the ball and she fought bravely vs Danish defense, being a little chaotic at times but leaving a good impression before being subbed-out at HT to leave place to a Cristiana Girelli who's slowly getting back at her best fitness after being out for covid. Benedetta Orsi was an actual debut instead and she seamlessly blended with the team as if she had done nothing but playing the CB role alongside Gama her entire career. Barbara Bonansea's goal came at the beginning of 2nd Half from a good first-touch combination: Valentina Cernoia found a good pass-line in the box to Valentina Bergamaschi, whose cross from the right to Bonansea found her ready to aim to the far post from close-range. Bonansea keeps being our top-player: crossing fingers for her to remain at this level of form in the next months and not to pick up any injury, because she's sure key to our WWC 2013 qualifier campaign and to our performance at Euro 2022. Denmark basically hadn't any shot, apart from two chances from close-range at 80' and 85', that weren't converted half because of the fact that Danish FWs weren't able to place their shots, half because Laura Giuliani did indeed a good job of covering her goal as best as she could. I am now curious to see what we're going to do on Sunday vs Norway: since the bizarre format from this year's Algarve Cup just gives two "group stage" games to each team, having won the first one put us half-way through the final match already. Meanwhile Norway lost by 0-2 to host Portugal! Not sure what to make of it, but they'll sure be looking for redemption vs Italy.
Line-ups of the match vs Norway (going to start in less than an hour) are out: Italy: Durante, Lenzini, Orsi, Linari, Boattin, Galli, Giugliano, Caruso, Bonansea, Girelli, Giacinti. Norway: Fiskerstrand, Hansen, Bergsvand, Thorisdottir, Skinnes Hansen, Bøe Risa, Engen, Eikeland, Maanum, Reiten, Ildushøy. Live on TV on RAiSport, so I'll probably won't post much here during the match. Italy looks like a 4-3-3, with probably Girelli as the central striker and Giacinti and Bonansea as wingers. Benedetta Orsi get her second cap after Wednesday's one vs Denmark: anyway she gets a veteran CB as her partner (Gama vs Denmark, Linari today). Curious to see Francesca Durante in goal (I assume Norway should shot ). Very strange that Norway don't start Emilie Haavi who, apart being very strong, knows so well our league... Actually Norway won't start any player from Serie A, not even Sønstevold or Fridlund.
I assume everyone is aware of the unlucky injury young Sassuolo's FW Sofia Cantore picked up while training with the team in these last days. Fracture of the fibula and out for some months. Not only it would have been very interesting to see her in action in NT (even in perspective, for the WWC 2023 qualifier match in Switzerland or for Euro 2022), but Sassuolo lose a key-piece in their run for a Champions' League spot.
It's a shame Italy took a goal at 45'+2', from a fast counter-attack (while winning 2-0! ) that originated from a FK in our offensive third, but anyway it's 2-1 Italy at HT. And Valentina Giacinti's goal was wonderful!