To be completely honest, coach Antonio Cincotta, after the game, only had good words for his former club, where he coached for 5 season including winning the title in 2016-2017 (the last one before the Juventus era), but it's a fact that he has beaten them anyway and comparing his team's position right now with Fiorentina's one is quite harsh in itself. Ah, what a rankings' table would be in Italy without media inglese? It's one of those traditions that never fade... (Seriously: I never read it either ). Yes, I had briefly talked about it at the beginning of the season: a miserable choice masked by a way to reduce the costs in the dawn of professionalism, but actually a Super-League-like project that basically aims at crushing the few teams remained that haven't been subsidized by a professional men's club and that have made the history of women's football in Italy when basically no-one was caring about it. This new league isn't loved by many, to the point that some already talk about a "step" to get back soon at 12 or even 14 teams (a very intelligent move: reduce the teams to 10 on the road to get to 14 ).
Well, it looks like no-one of the teams chasing Juventus agreed to re-open the run for the title, since no-one of them won today and Inter and Sassuolo even lost. It's in particular this last match that looked the more surprising: Sassuolo was missing many players (Haley Bugeja, Sofia Cantore, Maria Luisa Filangeri out injured, Benedetta Orsi sent-off last week and consequentely having to skip this game) and it's obvious that the team doesn't have the same depth as their rivals for the top spots of the league, but this new Lazio who had already stopped Fiorentina on a 2-2 draw last week is quite impressing; most likely too little too late to avoid relegation, since they remain at a 8 points distance from the fourth-to-last place with just 6 matchdays to go, but some of their offensive players are really catching the eye, it particular Noemi Visentin and Norwegian Johanne Fridlund, who scored a goal today after just 30" and started the action leading to a PK for her team. If there had to be a Maltese scorer in this match, people would have bet on Haley Bugeja (if she had played), instead it was Rachel Cuschieri to seal the game at 90'+1'. Sassuolo can keep chasing 2nd-place, but the chance to actually fight for the title is probably gone, since they remain 6 points behind Juventus. Pomigliano used some convoluted manegement strategies this season, but it seems to pay so far. They had been promoted to Serie A with coach Manuela Tesse last season: after three losses in the first three matches in the major division, they sacked her and signed Domenico Panico (not to be confused with Fiorentina's coach Patrizia Panico, he has nothing to do with). On Wednesday, after three other consecutive losses (including Juventus and Roma, though) and a total of 6 losses in the last 7 games (the only won game having been a key match vs direct rivals of Napoli), Domenico Panico was dismissed and... Manuela Tesse was back! Anyway, it seemed to work, since Pomigliano won their away match in Milan vs Inter with a screamer by Giorgia Tudisco assisted by always surprising young Italian-American Tori Dellaperuta. Pomigliano are back with a 4 points advantage over the relegation brawl, while Inter have now basically nothing more to ask from this season: 12 points behind Juventus, a 9 points gap from Champions'-League-granting 2nd place, out of Coppa Italia. Did Ajara Nchout Njoya lose her power with the new short haircut she displayed in the last pair of weeks? Of course joking, but it's a fact that Inter would need her at her best and she stopped scoring instead. Finally, Napoli pick up a golden point in Milan that allow them to catch up with Fiorentina at the third-to-last place: a goal at the opening of the match (by Lindsay Thomas for Milan) and another one at the end (a FK by Martina Toniolo for Napoli). Milan threw away a chance to gain points over their rivals for 2nd-place (since the title seems by now a faded dream). Funnily enough, a Napoli-Milan is scheduled this evening in men's football too and it will be a title decider: we're going to see (if interested ) if it will be a draw also (that would make for a three-way tie at the top with Inter). Results: Lazio 3-1 Sassuolo Inter 0-1 Pomigliano Milan 1-1 Napoli Rankings Juventus 41 Roma 38 Sassuolo 35 Milan 33 Inter 29 Sampdoria 25 Pomigliano 19 Empoli 18 Fiorentina 15 Napoli 15 Lazio 7 Hellas Verona 1 Highlights:
Is Juventus (including Cristiana Girelli) back in full force after a bad spell or is Milan completely toothless without injured new signing Alia Guagni and Martina Piemonte? Serie A has a break this week-end to play the semi-finals of Coppa Italia, but I guess no-one could have predicted the outcome of the 1st leg of the Milan-Juventus semifinal: in Milan, the final score was a tennis-like 1-6. See by yourself the braces by Cristiana Girelli and late-sub Agnese Bonfantini and the single goals by Amanda Nildén and Martina Rosucci. We can safely assume that the second leg of this clash, scheduled late at the end of April, is now viirtually useless. Once again Juventus's choice of sending Laura Giuliani to Milan, while signing Pauline Peyrraud-Magnin instead, turned out being correct, since their old GK was shaky and questionable in Milan's goal, while their new one made at least one relevant save when the score was still open. But this Milan looks too bad to be true. Tomorrow, Empoli-Roma has a clear favourite team, but Empoli posted some surprisingly good results in the last month (including beating Juventus in the league for the first time in three years), so who knows?
That's what being a top-player is about: when your team, despite a dominating performance, is struggling against a tough opponent, suddenly deciding the match out of nowhere from FK. That's what Manuela Giugliano did today for Roma. The match was a Roma's monologue for long, especially in 1st Half, but Empoli is very fit in this phase of the season and the two coaches knew each other very well (Roma's coach Alessandro Spugna was at Empoli last season and had Empoli'd current coach Fabio Ulderici as his second). Roma sure wasn't helped by an early muscle-injury that forced Emilie Haavi to be subbed-out at 25' (they'll have to hope that it's nothing really serious, because Haavi is of course a key-player for this final part of the season). The respect Roma had for Empoli was clearly shown by the fact that the turn-over of the players was really quite limited: Emma Lind (who made an excellent save in the final part of the game) started over Camelia Ceasar and Vanessa Bernauer was also given a starting chance that she more or less burned (her late sub Giada Greggi looked much better than her); Milica Mijatovic and Sophie Haug were subbed-in at 75', and basically that's all. For the rest it was a quite regular line-up. Unlike the other semi-final, this one could still somehow be reversed in the second leg, but actually Roma was already favourite and this away win makes their chances even better. Highlights:
Some sparse mid-week news from Serie A Femminile: - sadly Emilie Haavi's injury in Coppa Italia's semifinal was quite serious: a tear of femoral biceps that will need quite some time to recover. Haavi was a key-piece of Roma's run for the title: I am not sure they can really challenge Juventus without her. And anyway losing such a top-player is a blow to Serie A in general; - a very important match for the relegation fight won't be played this week-end: a new covid cluster in Pomigliano forced to postpone the match to a future date; - at least one piece of good news, although it anyway comes from a tragedy: international Ukrainian referee Kateryna Monzul (who directed lots of international matches in women's and men's football, including the final of WWC 2015) has been hosted in Italy by Italian federation (FIGC) and Italian referee association (AIA) and she will direct Inter-Sampdoria in Serie A Femminile this Sunday.
After the Coppa Italia break, the league resumes. And it's all smiles for Juve (who have the important Champions' League's clash vs OL scehduled for this Wednesday), since their opponents all draw, while they manage to win an away match in Napoli despite some missing players (Barbara Bonansea is listed as absent for some unspecified "illness" during the week, but my impression is that, if it hadn't been for the OL match this week, she would have been on the pitch today). Napoli looks much more solid than the team that had lost so many points in the first half of the season and they will sure have better chance to keep fighting to avoid relegation, but Juventus look basically beyond the small crisis that they had lived in the last pair of months and they were always in control of the game today, securing the win with one goal for each half (Lina Hurtig at 25' and Arianna Caruso at 70'). The 5 points advantage they now have over Roma can feel like a good omen for the Champions' League game. Of course OL is a much stronger team than Juventus on paper, but they miss a lot of key players and one week ago they couldn't win an away game vs the last-placed team in French League, so let's say that nothing's impossible, ok? The Roma-Milan match looked very balanced. Benedetta Glionna had an excellent performance (and hit the post twice! ), but the impression is that, without injured Emilie Haavi, Roma has lost a significant fraction of their offensive potential. For a short moment, before the direct clash from two weeks ago, it seemed like Roma could have really caught up with Juventus; now that they're again 5 points behind, they'll probably rather defend their 2nd place from Sassuolo's threat. Talking about Sassuolo, they're really oppressed by injuries, these days, and their roster doesn't have enough depth (or at least enough "quality" depth) to make up for that: the last one was an ACL rupture for young CB Benedetta Orsi, who had just debuted in Senior NT at Algarve Cup . Despite that, they more or less dominated the game in Empoli, but Lena Clelland and Michela Cambiaghi weren't clinical enough in front of the goal (and excellent Empoli's GK Alessia Capelletti did the rest). Belgium NT GK Didie Lemey had a bad blunder instead, serving the ball to Chanté Dompig who easily scored from the height of the PK-spot (and dedicated the goal to Empoli's ACL injured player Cecilia Prugna). Sassuolo managed to get a late equalizer with a wonderful middle-range effort by Alice Parisi, despite having seen Tamara Dongus sent off with a double Yellow Card a few minutes earlier, but this pace won't be enough to catch up with Roma at 2nd place (and Roma's draw vs Milan today would have been a golden chance to get level with them again). Empoli, meanwhile are successfully reaping points for the relegation fight everywhere, in the latest weeks. Results: Napoli 0-2 Juventus Roma 1-1 Milan Empoli 1-1 Sassuolo The highlights:
Only two games today, because, as I had mentioned above, Pomigliano-Lazio had to be postponed to a future date since there was a covid outbreak in the ranks of the home team. It's a shame, because it would have been a key-match of the relegation fight. By the way, the first sentence of this season is that Hellas Verona are officially relegated in 2nd Division, after today's 6-0 loss to Fiorentina. This match left them at just 1 point and lifted the 4th-to-last place, now represented indeed by Fiorentina, up at 18 points: thus, even should they win all of their remaining 5 matches, they could reach no more than 16 points, that won't be enough to remain in Serie A. Verona had the first chance of the match with Veronica Pasini and managed to keep the game at just 1-0 until HT, after Daniela Sabatino's goal (she now leads the scorers' rankings of Serie A alone); meanwhile Valentina Giacinti, after hitting the post earlier, had to be subbed-out injured (and everyone is praying it's nothing serious that could make her unvailable to NT in the next months!!! ). Then, in 2nd Half, Fiorentina took over: was it the punishment-retreat the club had decided after last-week's loss to Sampdoria? Or was it just the fact that they were playing the last-placed team in the league? ...Whatever it was, Marta Mascarello tried to plead for @Lohmann's forgiveness by scoring the 4th goal with a middle-range shot and by assisting the 6th one. This week-end results left Napoli out in the cold because they yesterday had to meet Juventus at the worst possible moment of the season, but, despite the fact that they're now 3 points behind Fiorentina and 4 points behind Pomigliano and Empoli, the fight is far from decided, since in the next weeks Fiorentina will have two back-to-back away matches in Milan (vs Milan AC and Inter respectively), while Napoli have two not-unwinnable matches scheduled vs Sampdoria and Lazio. Talking about Inter, they look quite crazy: they went ahead by 2-0 early vs Sampdoria, then one goal per side at the end of 1st Half made it 2-1 and then 3-1. In 2nd Half, they momentarily let Sampdoria equalize on 3-3 (including a goal by former Inter's MF Yoreli Rincón), just to finally have Gloria Marinelli save the day by completing her personal brace! I didn't watch the whole match, but I've read that Sampdoria had the chance to equalize again with Sabah Seghir in the dying minutes of the match, although for some reason this chance isn't shown in highlights. The refereeing by Kateryna Monzul didn't raise any particular after-game comment, and that's usual a sign of an excellent direction of the match. Today's two scores: Fiorentina 6-0 Hellas Verona Inter 4-3 Sampdoria The standings (where I've put a -1 next to the two teams currently having a match in hand) Juventus 44 Roma 39 Sassuolo 36 Milan 34 Inter 32 Sampdoria 25 Pomigliano (-1) 19 Empoli 19 Fiorentina 18 Napoli 15 Lazio (-1) 7 Hellas Verona 1 (relegated) Highlights of today's games:
I am aware the focus of today is way different , but before that a pair tidbits from Italian football: - Valentina Giacinti's injury in the match vs Verona last week-end was worth worrying but not season-ending: she will most probably miss the mid-april WWC 2023 qualifier matches, but after the NT break, towards the end of April, she should get available again for the last three match-days of Serie A Femminile and, especially, for Euro 2022. - After losing to Portugal and to Netherlands, Italy U-17 WWC easily dispatched Montenegro by 11-0, thus anyway remaining in the top-category for this age-level. This cycle looked quite average and they weren't expected much more than that: Portugal could have been beatable, but Netherlands were basically out of reach. Our U-19 looks much more promising, but we're going to see what they'll manage to do when push comes to shove, when they're going to play their last group-qualifier matches at the beginning of April (Switzerland clash again ).
Ok, now for the focus of today: Juventus-Olympique Lyonnais going to start at the Allianz Stadium in Turin in about 45 minutes. Some Juventus's players who had been precautionarily rested in the last league matches are back in the group: Barbara Bonansea (told you so last week-end ), Martina Lenzini, Andrea Stašková. Basically Juventus have their best line-up available except longtime ACL injured Cecilia Selvai (Linda Sembrant seems anyway almost back to her best fitness, by now). OL remain of course the favourite team, but Juventus have nothing to lose. Live match with Italian comment here :
Starting 11 are out: Sara Gama and Linda Sembrant are the CB duo; Julia Grosso unexpectedly gets the nod over Arianna Caruso in the midfield. Barbara Bonansea actually is not starting Linda Hurtig and Cristiana Girelli are the official strikers, I wonder if Valentina Cernoia is going to support them in a more advanced MF-role. About OL line-up, I'll only say that it looks impressive.
0-1 at HT. Lina Hurtig had an enormous chance in the first minutes from a Sarah Bouhaddi's blunder, but then it was mostly OL and Juventus didn't have any significant chances. OL didn't have "so many" chances, after all: they're deservedly ahead and could have scored another maybe, but Juve putting up a decent resistence. Many mistakes, but they're not completely crumbling apart as I was expecting after Caterina Macario's goal.
Yes, it was obviously the turning point of the game. Before that, in 60' minutes, OL had more or less dominated the match. By the way, I guess it was a crystal clear Red Card: Valentina Cernoia had won the ball and was going to run towards the goal and the only way Ellie Carpenter had to stop her was grabbing her as she did. From then on, a different game started: OL hadn't any real quality replacement for the Right-Back position (Janice Cayman was just a patch), while Joe Montemurro's changes were spot-on (they basically made the second goal, with Arianna Caruso assisting young Agnese Bonfantini). Interesting VAR check for Juventus' 1st goal: I guess it was more about knowing if Matilde Lundorf had brought the ball completely beyond the side-line than about a non-existent charge on Sarah Bouhaddi. Final Time Juventus 2-1 Olympique Lyonnais The fact that the away-goals rule doesn't exist anymore of course helps Juve, but it sure won't be easy in Lyon next week. OL keeps being chock full of quality and Delphine Cascarino was at time totally unplayable tonight for Juventus' defense.
Well, you'll admit that the Red Card totally changed the course of the game: before that OL wasn't sure destroying Juve, but they were anyway deservedly winning. Of course not having a proper defensive replacement for Ellie Carpenter on the bench aggravated the situation, but I am not sure Juventus would have won if the match had ended 11 vs 11. It was very good for OL to have Delphine Cascarino on the pitch (do I remember well that she was still missing a few games ago?) and she's the main reason, along with Selma Bacha and Caterina Macario, why I still think that advancing won't be as easy as it now could seem for Juventus.
I guess DAZN doesn't have much faith in Italian people's passion for women's football, because the highlights in Italian always are the shortest ones compared to the other international ones. Anyway, I guess it's worth to upload those, here on this thread. @sbahnhof will sure appreciate how the low, funeral-like tone of the comment when OL scores contrasts with the verve shown at Juventus' goals!
Linda Hurtig has renewed her contract with Juventus: https://www.juventus.com/en/news/articles/lina-hurtig-renews-until-2024
Yes, I like how DAZN has the national knowledge to get an authentic commentator who's fully partial (how'd you say that? parzialissimo?), while the channel still isn't aware Catalan's an official language of Barcelona... You're right, Italy's men are better off missing the Qatar debacle. My hope is that this epic qualifail means Patrizia Panico might be promoted to their new coach, from an assistant manager of the men's U21s, but is she still doing that now that she's at Fiorentina? The coach of a club near relegation is just what the Azzurri need right now. (also, her name is "panico", it's perfect)
Parzialissimo could work, although in this case using an adverb as a modifier would probably be more common, something along the lines of incredibilmente parziale o vergognosamente parziale (i.e. "Incredibly partisan" or "shamefully partisan"). I am actually not sure if Panico retained her federal coaching job but I tend to think it's a no (or at least she's not listed in the staff of U-21 on the FIGC website). Anyway, non-Italian speakers are seldom aware of how the position of the accent can make two Italian words sound very different, but, to an Italian ear, Patrizia Panìco, with a stress on the "i", can't be confused with the word pànico (i.e panic), with a stress on the "a". This gives me an excuse to remember that any time is a good time to listen to The Smiths' "Panic" :
"Panic on the pitch of Florence", that's what they'll be singing. (Think I had a brain-fade, about working with club and country - I know of coaches who could work with 2 teams due to international breaks, but of course Panico can't, the men's football calendar is totally different.) Serie A continues today (Sat), with a huge match between Sassuolo and Roma to decide 2nd place, potentially. Sunday, a hard away trip for Fiorentina:
A huge match indeed, but on paper only, since Sassuolo basically didn't show up. Roma comfortably won the away match by 0-3, Sassuolo was never dangerous and, with just 4 match-days to go, it's difficult to imagine how Roma could miss 2nd place now that they have a 6 points advantage over Sassuolo and at least a 5 points one over Milan (could be more, if Maurizio Ganz's side doesn't beat Fiorentina tomorrow). On the contrary, they could even still have a glimpse of hope of fighting for the title, should Juventus lose to Inter tomorrow. Sassuolo could claim their many inured players as an alibi, but it doesn't work, because Roma were missing players also (Emilie Haavi in particular, and some others: Annamaria Serturini, who tested positive to covid during the week, Emma Lind, who was out with a flu): the sad truth is that, after a brilliant beginning of the season, Sassuolo now look gassed; they only made 2 points in the last 4 match-days and a team that wants to qualify for the Champions' League can't afford such a limping pace. Benedetta Glionna scored a brace for Roma and this could be interesting in a National Team perspective also: Valentina Giacinti is out injured and Italy have the important match in Switzerland scheduled for mid-April. Of course, Glionna is not a striker, she's basically a winger, but an offense line with Cristiana Girelli as the central striker supported by Barbara Bonansea and Benedetta Glionna on the wings could be worth pondering about. Earlier today, what most probably will remain the most surprising result of the whole match-day had been posted by Hellas Verona, who were officially relegated in 2nd Division last week-end and a week later find their first league-win of the season, thus moving from 1 to 4 points in the rankings. There was probably a reaction after the humiliating 6-0 loss they took from Fiorentina last Sunday, but it's also likely that the end of the impossible fight to remain in Serie A unlocked something: now that they had nothing more to gain, except some experience for next season and the goal of not ending the league without a win, they could play much more relaxed. Or you could believe that it was their odd green secondary kit! It's anyway impressive that they've quite comfortably beaten Pomigliano by 2-0 despite missing their main scorer Lineth Cedeño (not sure why, probably some little injury, since she wasn't even on the bench: by the way, the big market-news are that Sampdoria signed her for next season, so she won't follow Verona in serie B). Of course, Pomigliano's abysmal performance did help Verona: Serbian GK Sara Cetinja, for instance, was quite questionable on both goals; or look at how young Tori Dellaperuta robbed her own team a goal by touching, while she clearly was off-side, a Deborah Salvatori-Rinaldi's shot that was already destined to the bottom of net! As much predictable as this mistake can be, Pomigliano's players probably had an overconfident approach to the game and they were punished. Or maybe were they still suffering from the wake of the covid cases that hit them one week ago? Anyway, the situation could get complicated for them: they still have a game in hand (the one vs Lazio, that was postponed last week and it's just been rescheduled today: it will be played on Saturday the16th of April, while the rest of the league will be in Easter-break), but they'll sure have to win it and, as we're going to see below, Lazio are no more the cakewalk they were looking like in the first half of the league. The match between Lazio and Empoli ends on a quite unexciting 0-0 draw. If Lazio wanted to hold the weakest hope of avoiding relegation, this was a game to win at all costs. Anyway, stopping Empoli on a draw wasn't a bad result in itself, considering the condition the Tuscan team showcased in the latest weeks. Of course Empoli would have needed a win too, but Pomigliano's loss anyway allowed them another little step towards the safe zone of the rankings. Scores of today: Hellas Verona 2-0 Pomigliano Lazio 0-0 Empoli Sassuolo 0-3 Roma Highlights:
It was a difficult task for Juventus today, with the match vs Inter sandwched in-between the two Champions' League quarter-final games against OL. But it looks like the bianconere got back to their best form in the key-part of the season (not sure if you can plan this kind of things with such accuracy, but one could figure that the conditioning was aimed at having them peak just now indeed). Lisa Boattin had an unusual day for a Full-Back with her brace and Agnese Bonfantini confirmed once again, after the Champions' League's game, that she's the queen of super-subs, giving her best performances when starting from the bench. By the way, Joe Montemurro is of course back at being the genius of the century on media, as fast as he had been targeted with unreasonable doubts when Juventus had looked shaky between January and February : no doubt, anyway that he's a very good coach, no matter how the retour-match with OL will go. Meanwhile, this win, that wasn't sure as easy as the final score could suggest (Inter had equalized the initial goal with a screamer from Tatiana Bonetti and was keeping the 1-1 draw at HT), quite locks-up the title for Juventus: with 4 match-days to go, it's difficult to imagine that Roma can close a 5 points gap (despite Juve having a pair tricky final games scheduled vs Sassuolo and Milan). With the title almost decided, all the interest goes to the fights to grab the Champions' League's spot and to avoid relegation: Milan-Sampdoria was important for both. The rossonere, with this 2-0 win, pass Sassuolo and conquer 3rd-place: Roma is 5 points ahead, but Milan is anyway still in the running. Fiorentina, instead, look depressingly weak: they can hope Napoli keep losing, as they did today, and remain behind them, but the fact that this is at the moment their best bet says it all... Talking about Napoli, their loss of today was vs Sampdoria, who was officially safe with this win. It could seem quite trivial, since they were anyway at 6th place already before this game, but at the beginning of this season they weren't credited at all with a so comfortably reached target: the team was completely new (they had bought the franchise from Florentia San Gimignano and only few of that team's previous players had been retained) and their improvised market-campaign now, in hindsight, looks like a stroke of sheer genius. Their best signing, anyway, was probably Antonio Cincotta, who, after winning the national title in 2017 with Fiorentina, has shown that he remains one of the best coaches in Italian women's football. ...And now let's see if Juventus can resist the onslaught in Lyon next Thursday. These are the results of today: Milan 2-0 Fiorentina Sampdoria 1-0 Napoli Juventus 3-1 Inter And these are the standings (with a -1 next to the two teams currently having a match in hand) Juventus 47 Roma 42 Milan 37 Sassuolo 36 Inter 32 Sampdoria 28 Empoli 20 Pomigliano (-1) 19 Fiorentina 18 Napoli 15 Lazio (-1) 8 Hellas Verona 4 (relegated) Highlights of the matches:
The all important roster for the upcoming WWC 2023 qualifiers matches vs Lithuania at home (8th of April) and Switzerland away (12th of April) has been published today : Goalkeepers: Francesca Durante (Inter), Laura Giuliani (Milan), Katja Schroffenegger (Fiorentina); Defenders: Elisa Bartoli (Roma), Valentina Bergamaschi (Milan), Lisa Boattin (Juventus), Lucia Di Guglielmo (Roma), Maria Luisa Filangeri (Sassuolo), Sara Gama (Juventus), Martina Lenzini (Juventus), Elena Linari (Roma), Angelica Soffia (Roma); Midfielders: Arianna Caruso (Juventus), Valentina Cernoia (Juventus), Aurora Galli (Everton), Manuela Giugliano (Roma), Giada Greggi (Roma), Martina Rosucci (Juventus); Attackers: Barbara Bonansea (Juventus), Tatiana Bonetti (Inter), Agnese Bonfantini (Juventus), Cristiana Girelli (Juventus), Benedetta Glionna (Roma), Martina Piemonte (Milan), Daniela Sabatino (Fiorentina), *Annamaria Serturini (Roma). *will join the squad after completing her period of self-isolation There is nothing really unexpected; the absentees were more or less note: Cecilia Salvai out for months with an ACL, young recent debutant Benedetta Orsi out with ACL too, Valentina Giacinti who will probably recover from her muscle-injury towards the end of April, Alia Guagni who just recovered from an injury but is not really ready. Fiorentina's GK Katja Schroffenegger is back in the group after her recent injury, despite some somehow questionable performances in the latest games; Orsi's team-mate at Sassuolo Maria Luisa Filangeri basically replaces her; Martina Lenzini and Martina Piemonte are also back from the injury list, while, as you can read, Annamaria Serturini, who skipped the last league match for covid, will join the group after the end of her self-isolation; Benedetta Glionna sure deserved a call with her latest performances (as I had quite easily predicted ; we're going to see if I was also right to predict a start for her alongside Barbara Bonansea and Cristiana Girelli), while her team-mate Valeria Pirone, who's having a bad spell, quite fell from grace. Another important veteran, though, was called back to fill Valentina Giacinti's quite big shoes: she's no other than current top-scorer of Serie A Femminile Daniela Sabatino, who, at 36, gets a call after more than a year from her last game in NT (Euro '22's qualifier Italy-Israel, where she had scored one of Italy's 12 goals from PK). Should Giacinti, or any other FW remain unavailable in the next months, she could legitimately fight for a place in Euro 2022's roster.
Wow, I had overlooked another important comeback to NT: Tatiana Bonetti! She sure got back to her old standards at Inter and we need any good scorer's help in this matches.
The starting teams are out: only slightly unexpected choice for Juventus is Martina Lenzini (back from injury) starting over Matilde Lundorf. Agnese Bonfantini on the bench and Lina Hurtig starting again was quite expected: Juventus: Peyroud-Magnin; Lenzini, Gama, Sembrant, Boattin; Rosucci, Pedersen, Cernoia; Bonansea, Girelli, Hurtig. In OL, Ada Hegerberg and Christiane Endler are back in the starting 11 as announced. Lindsey Horan is preferred to Amandine Henry, despite being back from an injury and playing with a knee brace last week: Olympique Lyonnais: Endler, 'Mbock Bathy, Buchanan, Renard, Bacha; Horan, Egurrola, Macario; Cascarino, Hegerberg, Malard. Starting here in a few minutes: