Napoli will have to wait at least one more day to be crowned Italian champions after Lazio beat Sassuolo 2-0 on Wednesday to reclaim second place in Serie A.
Lazio needed a victory at the Stadio Olimpico to not only stay in mathematical contention with five matches left in their season, but more crucially for their personal struggle to qualify for the Champions League. Lazio will play their next five matches at the Stadio Olimpico.
A draw will be enough for Luciano Spalletti’s side to clinch the Scudetto with one month left in the season even though they are 15 points clear of Lazio heading into their encounter against Udinese on Thursday night. Napoli are the runaway leaders of the league and currently have a 15-point advantage over Lazio.
As a result, the match that took place on Wednesday at the Stadio Olimpico was never about winning the league championship; rather, it was about earning an edge in the tight fight for the last three spots in Europe’s premier club tournament.
And due to Felipe Anderson’s ninth goal of the season, which came in the 14th minute of a close game after a great chipped ball from Marco Antonio, and a late strike from Toma Basic, Lazio are now six points clear of fifth-placed Atalanta. Felipe Anderson’s goal came after a fantastic chipped pass from Marco Antonio.
The first goal of the game was scored by Anderson five minutes after a weird sequence of events in which Ciro Immobile had a goal disallowed for offside, then awarded after a lengthy VAR assessment, and then disallowed again when it was discovered that Immobile had been offside earlier in the play.
Lazio’s hopes of finishing in the top four were given a boost when AC Milan were held to a 1-1 draw by Cremonese courtesy to a lucky stoppage-time goal scored by Junior Messias.
On Saturday, sixth-placed Milan will play home to Lazio, and then on Tuesday, they will face local rivals Inter Milan in the first leg of a blockbuster Champions League semi-final. Stefano Pioli’s second-string players have once again been unable to perform when they have been called upon.
Cremonese, on the other hand, are six points behind Spezia and Verona, who are located on each side of the relegation zone and have suffered losses at the hands of Atalanta and Inter, respectively. Cremonese are now in 17th place.
Inter, led by Simone Inzaghi, is now in fourth place after their crushing 6-0 victory at Verona. This victory put them up to fourth place ahead of their trip to Roma, who went down to seventh place after drawing 1-1 at Monza.
After Dusan Vlahovic scored his first goal in the league in nearly three months, which earned his team a 2-1 win over struggling Lecce, Juventus are now one point behind Lazio in third place.
Vlahovic puts an end to the drought
At the sparsely populated Allianz Stadium in Turin, the Serbian striker Vlahovic blasted in what would turn out to be the game-winning goal with five minutes remaining before halftime.
According to Massimiliano Allegri, who is the head coach of Juventus, “He had never experienced anything like this before, as at Fiorentina everything always went well. However, every player goes through a period like this in their careers.”
Juve ended a losing streak of four matches, but their prospects of qualifying for the Champions League depend on a fresh judgement about their 15-point punishment for illegal transfer activity, which was annulled on appeal a month ago. Juve’s chances lie on whether or not the deduction will be reinstated.
Even though Boulaye Dia scored a hat trick for Salernitana, the team was only able to salvage a 3-3 draw thanks to the efforts of Fiorentina, who responded to each of the Senegalese forward’s goals.
Dia, who was responsible for delaying Napoli’s celebration of winning the league championship on Sunday, upped his total for the season to 16 goals after scoring a hat trick at the Stadio Arechi.
That is three more than any Salernitana player has ever scored in Italy’s top-flight, with Marco Di Vaio netting 13 in 1998-99, and it helped Paulo Sousa’s side to both extend their unbeaten run to 10 matches and move eight points clear of the drop zone. In 1998-99, Marco Di Vaio netted 13 goals for Salernitana.
Meanwhile, Sampdoria moved closer to Serie B after suffering a home loss to Torino by a score of 2-0. The match ended in turmoil on the field as former Genoa player Pietro Pellegri scored the second goal for the away team in stoppage time and then taunted the enraged fans at Sampdoria.
Rock-bottom Samp are now 11 points away from safety with five games left to play, and the club is facing major financial troubles that put the 1991 Italian champions in danger of going bankrupt.