Week 25, Or: Goals Galore

By: Martha | February 26th, 2007

Samuel, actually celebrating a goal. Sunday morning I watched Fiorentina v Empoli on RAI. It was on La Grande Giostra Dei Gol, a five hour show that seems to combine weird tourism videos with endless studio analysis (watched by a live audience), all centered around one featured game. Once the game starts, in order to keep you up to date on what’s happening around the league, every time there’s a goal scored anywhere they play the William Tell Overture (I am not making this up — it’s the greatest thing in the world) and go to a picture-in-picture screen, with the goal replayed in the center and the game you’re trying to watch in a tiny box in the corner.

So, normally it’s fun and diverting because you get to see the goals without missing too much of the game. And yesterday, for the first half, everything went according to plan — there were only two or three goals in other games, so the interruptions were limited. In the second half, though, all hell broke loose. Honestly, I think I spent more time watching goals than the Fiorentina game, with Catania-Inter and Udine-Parma the main culprits. The William Tell Overture actually played mid-goal highlight at least twice, and it restarted to announce another goal even before the previous playing was over more than once. I thought Serie A was supposed to be boring and defensive — what happened to that? It was madness! Madness, I tell you!

[A table roundup and the weekend's full results are after the jump.]

Ahem. Anyway. So Inter won again, scoring I think 17 goals on hapless Catania, while Roma “kept pace” with them, hanging tough a mere 14 points off the lead. There was, however, some movement at the top this week with Lazio and Milan taking advantage of Empoli’s loss to leap-frog them into fourth and fifth respectively. Don’t sleep on Milan, people. That’s all I’m sayin’.

At the other end of the table, Ascoli heroically ground out another point, bringing their grand total for the season up to 14 from 24 games. The problem was that Parma also got one (with a whole lot more drama), so Ascoli are still two points adrift at the bottom. Parma have 16, and just ahead of them are Messina and Reggina on 20 points. Survival is going to be a serious dogfight this time, but things don’t look good for Ascoli or poor Cladio Ranieri.

And, without further ado, the results:

Atalanta - Palermo 1-1
Cagliari - Lazio 0-2
Catania - Inter 2-5: You know it’s going to be a crazy day when Walter Samuel scores.
Chievo - Torino 3-0: This one was bad enough to get coach Alberto Zaccheroni the sack. I hope Chievo feel guilty.
Fiorentina - Empoli 2-0
Livorno - Ascoli 0-0
Messina - Siena 1-0
Milan - Sampdoria 1-0
Roma - Reggina 3-0
Udinese - Parma 3-3: A penalty from the little semi-American Giuseppe Rossi grabbed Parma the point in what must have been a completely insane match. Damn you, TV networks, for not letting us see it.