Roberto Donadoni made it sound so difficult. After taking over as Bologna manager this October, he channelled Al Pacino’s “Inches” speech from the movie Any Given Sunday; the one in which an American football coach tells his faltering team that they must be prepared to die, to “tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces”, to keep their season alive. “The inches that we need are points in the standings,” said Donadoni. “We must fight for them with our teeth and our fingernails.”
It was a compelling narrative, undermined by one tiny flaw. The manager wanted us to believe that ferocious effort would be required for Bologna to drag themselves out of the mire. But it was hard to buy into that version of events when his players made their ensuing victories look so straightforward.
The Rossoblu had collected six points from their opening 10 games of this season under Delio Rossi. They equalled that figure in Donadoni’s first two matches charge. A 3-0 rout of Atalanta was followed by a 2-0 win away to Verona. Not bad for a club whose only previous successes had arrived by one-goal margins over fellow newly-promoted sides Carpi and Frosinone.
Donadoni knew before taking the job that this squad was talented enough to do better. He had even stressed that he would not accept 17th place if it was offered. “There are a lot of teams that are not better than Bologna,” he insisted. “I hope we will not have to spend this whole season thinking purely about safety.”
Where Frosinone and Carpi had been able to reinforce only with free agents and loan signings after achieving promotion, Bologna splashed out close to €25m on transfer fees. More than a third of that sum went on signing Mattia Destro from Roma but, by the time Donadoni arrived, the striker was yet to score a single goal.
“I’m certain he has not forgotten how it’s done,” said Donadoni, contending that the issue was one of support. “He needs to be helped by the rest of the team. Getting three or four men into the penalty area can reduce the pressure on him and can help the team to become more productive.”
So it proved. Destro opened his account in the win over Atalanta, and had an assist against Verona, too. More satisfying for the player would be the 2-2 draw with Roma that came next. Destro had parted on bad terms with the Giallorossi, and celebrated his 87th-minute equaliser – scored from the penalty spot – with such exaggerated enthusiasm that you wondered if he would ever make it back to the pitch.
Bologna would lose their next game, away to Torino, but after that it was Donadoni’s turn to seek revenge on a former employer. Six years have passed since he was fired by Napoli after a mere 19 games at the helm. He protested at the time that the club’s film-producing owner, Aurelio De Laurentiis, “understands as much about football as I do about cinema”.
Donadoni insisted in the buildup to Sunday’s game that those were distant memories, and that he himself had changed a great deal in the interim. And yet, he had also been caught up in a more recent dispute with Napoli. After steering Parma – for whom relegation and bankruptcy were imminent – to a draw against the Partenopei in May, Donadoni claimed that their players and directors had chastised his team for refusing to roll over.
Such allegations were disputed by Napoli, though perhaps they should simply have heeded the warning. If Donadoni could coax such a performance out of a Parma squad who had not been paid in months, then it stood to reason that he would do even better on Sunday with Bologna.
Napoli, admittedly, are a better team now than they were back then. They arrived at the Stadio Renato Dall’Ara as league leaders, fresh from their victory over Inter, and having conceded only four times in their last 16 matches. Donadoni’s team put three past them inside 60 minutes.
Destro opened the scoring, running on to a long ball from Amadou Diawara and finishing coolly. Luca Rossettini made it 2-0 to Bologna midway through the first half, heading home after he was left unmarked at a corner. Marek Hamsik then accidentally teed up Destro for the third, winning a tackle only to see the ball run straight to the feet of his opponent. Pepe Reina should still have kept the ball out at his near post.
The combined effect was bewildering. Few had thought it possible that this Napoli – so much more disciplined under Maurizio Sarri – could lose to Bologna in any circumstances, but the notion that they could ship three goals was unfathomable.
On another day, they might still have escaped with a share of the points. Napoli created plenty of chances, and eventually pulled two goals back inside the final three minutes – both scored by Gonzalo Higuaín. This day, though, belonged to Bologna – and especially to Donadoni.
The manager has been praised in Italy for the dignity with which he guided Parma last season, performing his duties unpaid but also supporting his players when they chose to strike in protest against the footballing authorities who had let them down. Gazzetta dello Sport recognised his efforts last month when they awarded him this year’s Premio Giacinto Facchetti – a prize bestowed each year on a figure who is deemed to represent “The Beauty in Football”.
Donadoni is rightly proud of the work that was done in trying circumstances, even if he stressed on receiving the prize that he would sooner have seen it given to the club employees whose efforts were made out of the spotlight. But he is also interested in a more conventional kind of footballing beauty, that created simply by a harmonious team on the pitch. He had been frustrated to start this season without a job, but might conclude that Bologna were worth the wait.
For all of their early struggles, the Rossoblu are a club with big ambitions. Taken over by Canadian businessman Joey Saputo, who also owns Major League Soccer’s Montreal Impact, last year, the club has not only invested in fresh talent but also opened negotiations with the local authorities about modernising the Dall’Ara.
Miracles are not expected overnight. The club’s fundamental target this season is still just to stay in the top flight and safeguard the revenue streams that will allow them to make further progress in the next one. To fight their way forward one inch at a time, as Donadoni himself explained it. Right before he threw the team on his shoulders and started out with a series of yard-long strides.
Talking points
• Whatever happened to Pazza Inter? In this most unpredictable of starts to the Serie A season it is, improbably, the Nerazzurri who continue to churn out results most reliably. Yes, they have lost now to both Napoli and Fiorentina, and drawn against a handful of others (including Juventus) but Saturday’s 1-0 win over Genoa was their eighth such result of the season and, truthfully, with better finishing the scoreline could have been a fair bit more comfortable.
• Such profligacy did beg the question of why Roberto Mancini chose to leave Mauro Icardi – club captain and last season’s joint-capocannioniere, lest we forget – on the bench throughout. The manager insisted that this was a non-story afterwards, saying he had only rested the player twice all season (excluding the one game the striker missed through injury). It might also have been the least of Icardi’s worries, after he was reportedly robbed at gunpoint while on his way out for dinner later on Saturday night.
• Slipping back in the title race are Roma, who had 50kg of carrots dumped outside their training ground last week by fans carrying a banner defining them as “conigli” - literally “rabbits”, but used as a slang term for “coward” in much the same way as “chicken” would be in English. I don’t know that the Giallorossi especially lacked courage against Torino on Saturday, but they certainly lack confidence and there was a sense of inevitability to the way they threw away the late lead they had gained courtesy of a Daniele Padelli blunder. With Gervinho once again succumbing to injury, it cannot be taken for granted that they will get the win they need over Bate Borisov on Wednesday to reach the Champions League last-16.
• Still no take-off for Vincenzo Montella at Sampdoria, who has now lost his first three games in charge at the club. The club’s president Massimo Ferrero described them as “like a fleet of Ferraris who respect the speed limits too much.”
• Luigi Delneri won his first game in charge of Verona, at home to Pavia in the Coppa Italia last Wednesday, but defeat to Empoli four days later means that they remain the only team left in Serie A without a victory. Indeed, they have lost further ground on 19th-placed Carpi, who held Milan to a goalless draw.
• From 12th place and 11 points behind the league leaders on 28 October, Juventus – following their 2-0 victory away at Lazio – have now climbed to fifth, just six points off the top. And next week, they are at home to second-placed Fiorentina.
• Finally, special acknowledgment for Giulio Migliaccio, introduced as a second-half substitute for Atalanta and on the pitch for all of 32 seconds before he was sent off in their 3-0 win over Palermo. His was, according to L’Eco Di Bergamo, the fastest Serie A red card of the last decade.
Results: Atalanta 3-0 Palermo, Bologna 3-2 Napoli, Carpi 0-0 Milan, Fiorentina 3-0 Udinese, Frosinone 0-2 Chievo, Inter 1-0 Genoa, Lazio 0-2 Juventus, Sampdoria 1-3 Sassuolo, Torino 1-1 Roma, Verona 0-1 Empoli
