Milan edge minnows Novara as Juve bounce back

January 14, 2010

Mathieu Flamini scored the winner nine minutes from time as a second-string AC Milan team beat third division Novara 2-1 at the San Siro on Wednesday to reach the Coppa Italia quarter-finals.

The rossoneri were joined by Juventus and Catania after they recorded victories over Napoli and Genoa respectively.

Milan coach Leonardo made 11 changes to the team that won 3-0 at Juventus on Sunday with Ronaldinho, loan signing David Beckham, Andrea Pirlo and Alessandro Nesta not even included on the bench.

Veteran striker Filippo Inzaghi opened the scoring on 12 minutes but in the first minute of the second period Pablo Gonzalez stunned the San Siro by drawing Novara level.

Flamini had the last word, though, and Milan will play Udinese or Lumezzane in the next round.

Eight people, amongst them two children, were taken to hospital after 20 people were injured in a motorway crash between a lorry and a coach carrying Novara supporters to the game – Novara lies just 40km west of Milan.

Juventus bounced back from their weekend humbling as an Alessandro Del Piero brace, one from the spot, helped them to a 3-0 victory in Turin.

Diego scored the first as a full-strength and attacking Juve blew away Napoli’s 14-match unbeaten run under coach Walter Mazzarri, although he did rest many first team regulars in a competition few teams take seriously in Italy.

Catania recorded an impressive 2-1 win away to Genoa to reach the last eight. Inter Milan and AS Roma had previously also qualified for the quarters, with the final three qualifiers to be decided on Thursday.

ROME (AFP)

Tags: ac milan, Alessandro Del Piero, Alessandro Nesta, andrea pirlo, catania, coppa italia, David Beckham, Diego, filippo inzaghi, full strength, genoa, inter milan, Italy, juventus, leonardo, lorry, Mathieu Flamini, Milan, milan juventus, milan team, napoli, pablo gonzalez, quarter finals, Roma, ROME, ronaldinho, rossoneri, San, san siro, second period, second string, turin, veteran striker, Walter Mazzarri

Determined Ferrara: ‘I think my job is not at risk’

January 11, 2010

Ciro Ferrara said he believed he would stay in his job after Juventus’ latest setback against Milan. On Sunday, the Juventus manager saw how his team got thrashed by their competitors from Milan.

Juventus were stunned by Milan: goals from Allessandro Nesta and Ronaldinho (2) secured a wide victory for the Rossoneri. Table topper Internazionale now has a twelve point lead over their rivals from Turin. However, Ferrara has no thoughts of quitting his job.

“I am not made like that. My way is to try to change things.

“I sincerely think my job is not at risk. Of course we are in a negative period but it’s not for me to make the decisions. Any decisions will be accepted.”

The Bianconeri spent heavily in the close season but Brazilians Diego and Felipe Melo have been big flops so far.

A flurry of injuries, including a knock to midfielder Christian Poulsen on Sunday which could delay Tiago’s planned loan move to Atletico Madrid, have also not helped Ferrara.

“I obviously understand the disappointment of the fans.

“Our aim is to try to find the enthusiam there was at the start of the season,” added Ferrara.

His Milan colleague Leonardo was satisfied with his team and backed Ferrara.

“It was a difficult game, even if it didn’t seem like that,” the Brazilian coach said.

“Juve are in a situation similar to us in October, it seems like everything is going wrong. I say to Ciro that it can sort itself out.”

Tags: aim, allessandro nesta, atletico madrid, bianconeri, brazilians, christian poulsen, ciro ferrara, colleague, Diego, disappointment, enthusiam, Felipe, felipe melo, internazionale, latest setback, leonardo, MADRID, Milan, milan juventus, rivals, ronaldinho, table topper, tiago, turin

Real, Juve, Milan eye Champions League progress

December 8, 2009

The first four Champions League groups conclude on Tuesday with a host of major clubs including Real Madrid, AC Milan, Juventus and Bayern Munich still unsure of a place in the knockout phase.

Real are practically assured of qualification and can afford to lose their Group C clash at Marseille on Tuesday by three goals, while Milan will progress from the same group with victory at FC Zurich.

Brazilian playmaker Kaka has been ruled out for Real due to a groin injury but Cristiano Ronaldo is expected to start despite being sent off in his side’s 4-2 La Liga win over Almeria on Saturday.

Karim Benzema was on target against Almeria, converting a rebound in the 83rd minute to put his side 3-2 up after Ronaldo had seen a penalty saved, and the former Lyon striker is likely to receive a hostile reception from the Marseille fans.

“It’s always a pleasure to return to France. We expect the match in Marseille to be tough,” he said.

German giants Bayern Munich travel to Juventus in Group A knowing that only a win will prolong their Champions League campaign.

Juve lost 2-0 at Bordeaux in their last match in the competition, handing the French champions top spot in the group, but they warmed up for the visit of Bayern with a rousing 2-1 win at home to Serie A leaders Inter and need just a draw against Bayern to join Bordeaux in the last 16.

“This can be very useful going into the Bayern game if we are smart, humble, focused and realise we can play with this aggression against everyone,” said Juventus’s veteran forward Alessandro Del Piero after the win over Inter.

“If we forget that, then we run the same old risks.”

Bayern will still be without tendinitis victim Franck Ribery for the trip to Turin but Dutch winger Arjen Robben and Belgian centre-back Daniel van Buyten have both overcome injuries to be included in the squad.

The four-time European champions endured a poor start to the season but their 2-1 win at home to Borussia Moenchengladbach on Friday extended their unbeaten return in the league to eight matches and took them up to third in the Bundesliga standings.

“We have three games left until the winter break,” said goalkeeper Hans-Joerg Butt. “We have to win them all, and we can win them all.”

Elsewhere on Tuesday, Wolfsburg can join Manchester United in the knockout round if their result at home to the English champions in Group B is better than what CSKA Moscow achieve at Besiktas.

United will tie up top spot, and subsequently a favourable draw in the last 16, with a draw at Wolfsburg but coach Sir Alex Ferguson will be forced to field a makeshift defence due to a mounting injury crisis at the club.

“I don’t know where I’m going to get a back four for Tuesday,” Ferguson said after his side ended the 4-0 Premier League win at West Ham on Saturday with midfielders Darren Fletcher, Michael Carrick and Ryan Giggs playing in defence.

“The injuries in defence are becoming a bit of a headache to us. Michael Carrick stepped in and did very well.”

Chelsea and Porto are already sure of a place in the next round, Chelsea as winners of Group D, but Atletico Madrid will seal a consolation berth in the Europa League if APOEL Nicosia fail to win at Chelsea.

Defending champions Barcelona travel to Dynamo Kiev in Group F on Wednesday and can afford to lose by any two-goal scoreline apart from 2-0 and still go through due to their head-to-head record, while in the same group Inter Milan face a winner-takes-all home meeting with Russian champions Rubin Kazan.

PARIS (AFP)

Tags: ac milan, Alessandro, Alessandro Del Piero, arjen robben, Barcelona, bayern munich, Bordeaux, CHELSEA, daniel van, Daniel van Buyten, darren fletcher, european champions, fc zurich, franck ribery, hostile reception, juventus, Karim Benzema, Kiev, last match, league campaign, Lyon, MADRID, major clubs, Marseille, Michael Carrick, Milan, milan juventus, Moscow, PARIS, premier league, real madrid, ronaldo, ryan giggs, sir alex ferguson, target, west ham, ZURICH

Zamparini: No Kjaer offers

November 11, 2009

Palermo president Maurizio Zamparini has confirmed that he has not been contacted by any Premier League club over the availability of Simon Kjaer.

The 20-year-old defender has gained a string of admirers as a result of some stand-out displays in Serie A following his €4million move from Danish side FC Midtjylland in July 2008.

But Zamparini insists that Palermo will be looking to do all they can to keep hold of the Dane with the likes of Inter Milan, Juventus, Fiorentina, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Manchester City and, more recently Manchester United, being linked with Kjaer.

A €12m release clause is unlikely to be a stumbling block but Zamparini admits that he is looking to have the clause removed.

“Neither Manchester United or other teams have contacted us specifically regarding Kjaer,” he told skysports.com.

“There are only incorrect movements from his agent who is offering the player the teams most important for a personal profit.

“If one club wants Kjaer they have to pay €12m cash. But the clause is not valid for January, only for the end of the season.

“And we are trying to eliminate this clause, discussing with the player, even if – I repeat – there are some problems with his agent.”

Abhimanyu Rajput

Tags: admirers, danish side, inter milan, Liverpool, MADRID, Manchester, manchester city, manchester united, Maurizio Zamparini, midtjylland, Milan, milan juventus, Palermo, personal profit, premier league, rajput, real madrid, Simon Kjaer, stumbling block

Champions League Play-offs: Fiorentina and Sporting set for a decider

August 25, 2009

Arsenal, Lyon and Stuttgart may already have one foot in the lucrative group phase of the Champions League with Atletico Madrid, who hold a useful 3-2 lead over Panathinaikos, but Fiorentina and Sporting Lisbon, level at 2-2 from the first leg in Portugal, have everything to play when they meet for the 2nd leg of the play-offs on Wednesday.

Both sides , who last won a European competition back in the early 1960s, are set for a decider when they meet in Florence.

Fourth in last season’s Italian championship, Fiorentina has struggled to keep pace with the traditional Serie A title contenders such as Juventus, Inter and AC Milan and last won the title in 1969. It was runner up in the old European Cup in 1957 and its only European triumph was in the 1961 Cup Winners Cup.

Sporting Club is an 18-time winner of the Portuguese league but its only European success was the 1964 Cup Winners Cup. Now these two underachievers have a chance to make a mark in European football’s most prestigious club competition but only one can get there.

The playoff losers have the consolation of dropping into the next round of the Europa League, while the winners will be in Thursday’s draw for the group phase in Monte Carlo.

Among those already there are the likes of defending champion Barcelona, big-spending Real Madrid, powerhouse English teams, Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea, Italy’s Inter Milan, Juventus and AC Milan and Bayern Munich of Germany, all of them among the favorites to win the coveted title.

Getting to the group phase, however, guarantees at least six matches with the ticket sales and TV revenue that comes with them, and with the tantalizing possibility of reaching the knockout phase and dreams of a place in the May 22 final in Madrid.

After beating Celtic 2-0 in Glasgow, Arsenal will be confident of reaching the group phase for the 12th time in a row.

Manager Arsene Wenger is already certain he won’t have team captain Cesc Fabregas for the return leg at the Emirates Stadium on Wednesday because of a hamstring injury he picked up in Saturday’s 4-1 victory over Portsmouth.

Celtic’s 5-2 victory over St. Johnstone on Saturday lifted the team to the top of the Scottish Premier League standings and midfielder Shaun Maloney is confident the team can overcome the home leg deficit in the same way it knocked out Dynamo Moscow in the previous round.

“If we can nick the first goal as we did in Moscow, that would give us a chance to get the tie back, and start to put Arsenal under a bit of pressure,” Maloney said. “We know we need a great result.

“We’ve not given up the tie yet. We’ve not settled for playing in the Europa League, we cannot do that. “We know how difficult it is going to be to be able to go through and that the odds are massively against us, but we have to believe that we can win at the Emirates.”

Lyon goes to Anderlecht on Tuesday with a 5-1 advantage from the home leg but left behind striker Sidney Govou, midfielder Ederson and right-back Cleber Anderson who are injured. Rightback Francois Clerc is back while striker Lisandro Lopez, who was rested during Saturday’s 3-0 win at Auxerre, is expected to play in Brussels.

Atletico Madrid has home advantage and a narrow lead over Panathinaikos in a meeting of two clubs who have never won the competition but were runners up in the early 1970s.

Holding a 3-0 lead over Ventspils from the away leg in Latvia, FC Zurich looks like making it to the group phase for the first time, even though it reached the semifinal of the old European Cup in 1964 and ‘77.

Likewise Maccabi Haifa holds a 2-1 advantage over Salzburg and has home advantage when they meet again on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Stuttgart is at home to Romania’s Politehnica Timisoara and is already 2-0 ahead and Greek champion Olympiakos is 2-0 up on Sheriff Tiraspol of Moldova and just needs to avoid losing by more than 1-0 at home.

Apoel Nicosia bids to overcome a 1-0 deficit at home to FC Copenhagen.

Abhimanyu Rajput

Tags: ac milan, atletico madrid, bayern munich, cup winners cup, defending champion, fabregas, group phase, inter milan, italian championship, milan juventus, portuguese league, prestigious club, real madrid, return leg, sporting club, sporting lisbon, title contenders, tv revenue

Who´s afraid of the Premier League? Not Serie A

December 23, 2008

With English clubs so competitive in the Champions League in recent years, you might have expected Italy to react with trepidation after Inter Milan, Juventus and AS Roma were pitched against Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal in the last 16.

The teams in question betrayed no nerves after the draw, although they could hardly be expected to raise the white flag before a kick of the ball.

But the media and pundits have also been upbeat about the Serie A sides’ chances of pulling off a 3-0 whitewash over their Premier League rivals, surprisingly so given the recent history of knockout-stage ties between the nations (Italian clubs have been on the losing end in most knockout ties against English clubs, the most significant exception being AC Milan´s win over Liverpool in the 2007 final).

Nevertheless, Italy’s top sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport borrowed some optimism from Barack Obama to greet the draw with the headline, “Yes We Can”.

They found an ally in Britain in The Observer’s Paul Wilson, who wrote that Real Madrid’s opponents Liverpool looked England’s best bet of making the quarter-finals in a blog on Sunday.

Former Italy and AC Milan coach Arrigo Sacchi, frequently a harsh critic of Italian football, struck a confident note too.

“The distance between Roma, Inter, Juve and their respective opponents Arsenal, Manchester and Chelsea has narrowed,” he wrote in Gazzetta this week.

“The time is right for them to pull off this extraordinary feat… They must believe they can do it because they have the capabilities and quality to win convincingly against very strong opposition.”

So can Serie A’s representatives really dent the Premier League supremacy this year? Sacchi said they can if they avoid the negative play often associated with Italian soccer and take the ties to the English.

Roma, Juve and Inter certainly have the firepower to do damage with the likes of forwards Francesco Totti, Alessandro Del Piero, Amauri and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

And Italian football is not as defensive as it used to be.

But this could be because, as Mark Meadows pointed in a recent blog here, Italians are simply not as good at defending as they were when their sides ruled the European roost. Once it would have been unthinkable for a Serie A team to ship seven goals in the way Roma did at Old Trafford two seasons ago.

If Italy’s traditional forte has become its Achilles heel, the optimism Sacchi and company have expressed looks misplaced.

PHOTO: Kaka celebrates with the trophy after AC Milan´s Champions League final win over Liverpool in Athens, May 23, 2007. REUTERS/Phil Noble

Go to Source