Samp v Siena: More Cassano

By: Martha | January 26th, 2008

Cassano, actually happy. The more consistently Antonio Cassano plays, the more I worry about the Azzurri. It seems increasingly likely to me that Roberto Donadoni will take him to the Euros, if only because the media and the public will explode noisily if he doesn’t, and he would probably rather not deal with that sort of doubt before the games even start. (Plus: Goals! Vision! Skill!) But then Cassano will be Cassano, and Donadoni will have no idea how to deal with him, and his team will be unavoidably screwed up.

I know this is not necessarily a majority opinion, but it’s all I can think about as I watch Cassano play — he may not be 100% fit yet, but his form and vision are there. He hit the bar against Siena in the third minute, scored the only goal of the match, and was generally a threat every time he touched the ball for the 70 minutes he played (Mixed in, of course, was bitching and moaning and incredibly immature behavior, but he’s got that in common with a lot of Serie A strikers.); if there’s not another major, on-pitch meltdown, Donadoni’s going to take him, and it’ll take a miracle for thing not to end — literally — in tears.

Away from Cassano, the match was a surprisingly good one, considering the fact that the visitors are barely above the relegation zone, and might have been expected to sit in and hope for a point. But, since the visitors were Siena, they came out and attacked freely and, after absorbing a wave of early pressure from Sampdoria, settled comfortably into the match. Despite the many places in the table between the teams, Siena rarely looked overmatched (apart from when Cassano had the ball), and the goal — which came in the 44th minute — was as a result of a rare defensive error. Cassano pulled in a poor clearance on the corner of the box, took a touch, and bent it past Alex Manninger in the Siena goal, just catching the inside of the far post. It was a great finish and a cruel blow to Siena, who had been seconds from going into the half on ever terms.

In the second half, Siena had chances to equalize, particularly through debutant Christian Riganò, and had Sampdoria pinned back in their end for the last 10 minutes of the match. Despite nearly 10 minutes of injury time (among other things, Gennaro Delvecchio spent a lot of time being “hurt” in various ways, which caused more time to be added on), though, the increasingly frustrating visitors couldn’t pull the crucial goal back; the “third half” involved a lot of shouting and some shoving, but things calmed down before anything ugly happened. For the next 20-or-so hours, Samp are in the top six.