Palermo v Napoli: All Kinds of Awesome

By: Martha | November 10th, 2007

OW. Jesus that game was fantastic. The first half was as exciting as 45 scoreless minutes can possibly be, and the second, while less pretty, was seriously hardcore in its intensity and commitment. It ended 2-1 to Palermo, thanks to a brace by Giovanni Tedesco, but Napoli were threatening until the last second of injury time (which, by the way, lasted seven minutes). Both teams were completely gassed afterward — you don’t see league matches end with with players just stopping where they are and standing with their hands on their knees very often.

The first half was gorgeous from both teams (I would like to know where this Palermo side was during that bloodless draw with Inter — even without either Amauri or Miccoli, they were all over Napoli), with the visitors flying forward as if they were at home. I know Napoli’s defense was their strength last season, but it’s incredibly exciting to watch them attack right now; Ezequiel Lavezzi (AKA Pee Wee Herman) is magical on the ball and such a passionate worker that he makes you forget all the princess-y, lazy strikers in Serie A, and he and Marek Hamsik get great service and cover from the midfield, allowing them to run at defenses all night long. Marcelo Zalayeta was next to useless on the day — it was amazing he was left on the pitch for 82 minutes — but in spite of him the Napoli attack flowed beautifully, bringing several impressive saves from old man Jimmy Fontana in the Palermo net. Palermo, too, were well up for it, and Franco Brienza was on fire from the start, hitting the post once and threatening the Napoli goal over and over again.

Considering how much attacking went on — not to mention the utter chaos that enveloped the Napoli penalty area shortly before the break — it was something of a miracle that the half ended scoreless. That changed just 10 minutes into the second half, when Mariano Bogliacino’s diving header put a lovely Lavezzi cross into the corner of Fontana’s goal for a short-lived Napoli lead. (Just after he made contact with the ball, Bogliacino’s nose was crunched by Cristian Zaccardo’s shin; I have no idea how he carried on with just a little white bandage on the bridge of his nose, because that thing has to be broken.) Mere seconds later, though, Tedesco tied the score with what looked like a gorgeous chip but was, in fact, a shot that took a fortuitous deflection and floated over Gennaro Iezzo.

The coherence seemed to slip from the Napoli attack after that goal, and though there were still moments of good play, Palermo were very much the brighter team, and went ahead (again through Tedesco) less than 10 minutes later. There was still a lot of fight left in Napoli, though, and Fontana had to be sharp, particularly during the last 10 minutes (plus all that injury time), when Napoli laid siege to his box, essentially playing a 2-4-4 formation, and putting nine men in the box on a few occasions. Injury time went on and on and on, and got even longer thanks to injuries during the added time, but eventually it ended and Palermo had hung on, winning just their second home game in the last 154 matches (I exaggerated, but only slightly). Hopefully that’ll buy Stefano Colantuono a nice, quiet international break in which his job isn’t threatened even once.