Massimo Maccarone couldn’t wait for Christmas. In fact he couldn’t even wait until the end of the game. There were more than 40 minutes left in Empoli’s final match of 2015, away to Bologna, when he stuck the ball in the net for the second time. He celebrated by sprinting over the sideline, swiping a beer out of the hands of an opposition fan and helping himself to a swig.
It was not an entirely spontaneous act. The spectator was part of a group watching the game with Maccarone’s old friend, Thomas Locatelli. That pair had played together at Siena in the mid-2000s and would sometimes drink together in their free time. Every now and then they would even hop in a car and make the two-and-a-half hour drive to Bologna - where Locatelli had spent the best years of his career - to visit one of their favourite pubs, The Old Bridge.
They intended to meet up after Saturday’s match, so why not get the party started a little early? Besides, what could be more festive than a Big Mac and a beer? “It was a symbolic and beautiful gesture,” proclaimed Maccarone afterwards. “They are Bologna fans but friendship goes beyond.”
A lovely sentiment, even if it is hard to believe that Locatelli and chums could have behaved so generously if this match had taken place two months earlier. Bologna were in dire straits by the end of October, with only six points from 10 games, but have since been revitalised by the appointment of Roberto Donadoni. Despite Maccarone’s two goals condemning them to a 3-2 defeat on Saturday, they will finish the year five points clear of the relegation zone.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | AC Milan | 17 | 3 | 28 |
| 7 | Sassuolo | 16 | 4 | 27 |
| 8 | Empoli | 17 | 1 | 27 |
| 9 | Atalanta | 17 | 0 | 24 |
| 10 | Lazio | 17 | -6 | 23 |
If that is a praise-worthy achievement, then it is high time that we also took notice of Empoli. This was their fourth consecutive league win – the first time in club history that they have achieved such a run in the top flight. It propelled them up to seventh place, equal with their best-ever league finish.
Such feats become all the more noteworthy when you consider what this team lost over the summer. Maurizio Sarri, the manager who guided Empoli up to Serie A and then kept them there last season, departed for Napoli. Worse, he took two of his best players with him. Mirko Valdifiori was the club’s joint-leading assist man in 2014-15, while Elseid Hysaj had emerged as one of the most talented young full-backs in the division.
That was not all. The centre-back Daniele Rugani, fresh from his first senior Italy call-up (albeit he never made it off the bench), had been purchased by Juventus during the winter transfer window before being loaned back to Empoli until the end of the campaign. Now he, too, would leave to join up with the Bianconeri.
To compensate for such departures, Empoli relied mostly on loans and free signings. They made a single seven-figure purchase, paying €4m to acquire Riccardo Saponara from Milan. Although a wise investment in a player with bags of potential, even this felt like treading water in the immediate term. The 22-year-old trequartista had already been with the club on loan for the second half of last season.
It did not look like a recipe for progress. But Empoli have moved from strength to strength. Saponara was electric through the first part of the season and when he picked up a ban that would keep him out for most of October, another creative talent emerged. Piotr Zielinski is even younger than his team-mate, but just as capable of unpicking a defence.
Now the pair are beginning to dovetail together, Saponara terrorising defenders with his runs while Zielinski seeks out the through-ball. Both of them benefit hugely from the hard work put in by Maccarone up front.
At 36, the striker knows what he is and what he isn’t. He might never have made good on Steve McClaren’s claim that he was “the Italian player most similar to [Alessandro] Del Piero”, but Maccarone has achieved a longevity and a consistent (if unspectacular) goalscoring productivity that many players would envy.
He remains a deceptively technical player, more subtle than his muscular approach to the game would have you believe. That contrast was visible in his goals against Bologna: the first a delicate touch to convert a super chipped pass from Zielinski, and the second a thumping header.
Both were equally valuable, sealing the three points just as his brace against Carpi had helped to do a week earlier. Before Maccarone could slip away to sup some more beer with Locatelli, he found himself fielding questions about whether Empoli might make it into Europe. “We cannot think about that until we have reached our objective for this season,” he said, “which remains safety from relegation.”
The notion that Empoli would even be mentioned in such a conversation might have seemed ludicrous at the start of the campaign. But theirs is hardly the only unlikely twist in what has been a gloriously unpredictable first act to this season.
Take Sassuolo, for example. Their wage bill is little more than a quarter that of Milan, and yet, if they had played, and won, their postponed match at home to Torino they would now be ahead of the Rossoneri. As it is, they sit one point behind with a game in hand.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Inter Milan | 17 | 12 | 36 |
| 2 | Fiorentina | 17 | 18 | 35 |
| 3 | Napoli | 17 | 18 | 35 |
| 4 | Juventus | 17 | 14 | 33 |
| 5 | Roma | 17 | 14 | 32 |
Meanwhile, Serie A’s top five teams are separated by a total of four points. Few would have predicted that Inter would finish the year on top of the pile, but even fewer might have guessed that they would let the opportunity for a greater advantage slip by losing at home to Lazio on Sunday night. The Biancocelesti had collected a paltry two points from their previous seven league games.
We cannot even say Inter were unlucky. They fell behind to an exceptional strike from Antonio Candreva, but that arrived in the fifth minute and by half-time Roberto Mancini’s team had failed to put a single shot on target in response. Although Inter did equalise after the interval, they failed to press on and were punished when Candreva punctured them again, forcing the ball home after his initial penalty was saved.
If that was not ugly enough, Felipe Melo – the same player who had given away the spot-kick – made sure that the year would finish on an even lower note, planting a foot into the throat of Lucas Biglia and drawing a straight red card for his trouble.
“Sometimes you can win without playing well,” reflected a rueful Mancini at full-time. “But not while giving away gifts like we did. We dressed up like Santa Claus and then we ruined Christmas.”
Only for themselves, of course. The likes of Napoli, Fiorentina and Roma were delighted to be brought back to within touching distance of the top. All of Italian football, though, now has one eye on the Juventus team that closed out the year with a seventh consecutive league win. A team that now rests just three points away from first place.
As unpredictable as this season has been, there are plenty of people who already believe that they can foresee its inevitable conclusion.
Talking points
• Juventus, to be fair, did not find life as straightforward as they wanted it to be away to Carpi. After falling behind to a Marco Borriello goal, the champions rallied to lead 3-1, only to then let the nerves back in as Leonardo Bonucci jabbed the ball into his own net in injury time. Moments later, Lorenzo Lollo had a chance to level the scores from three yards out but fluffed his lines. It was enough to make Massimiliano Allegri rip his jacket off in disgust. He had seen his team throw away two points at home to Frosinone in September, and for a moment feared history was about to repeat.
• If Juve’s defending toward the end of that Frosinone game was inexcusable, then what word can we possibly use to describe their new Christmas song?
• Among the most powerful images of the weekend was that of Alessandro Florenzi sprinting to embrace Rudi García after scoring Roma’s opening goal in their 2-0 win over Genoa, but the manager’s position remains under threat. The club’s owner, James Pallotta, denied reports that he had met with José Mourinho but told Il Messaggero that: “whatever decision I make can never be based on the result of a single match”. He is said to favour a change, and would find considerable support from fans who believe that the team has become too predictable under the Frenchman, but some club directors remain convinced that Garcia can turn things around. Complicating the picture further is the question of whether an adequate replacement could be found in the middle of the season. Luciano Spalletti seems a more likely option than Mourinho, but no doubt we will get a clearer picture in the coming days.
• Beyond the three points, there was at least one further bright spot for Roma on Sunday: a goal for the 18-year-old striker Sadiq Umar. The Giallorossi were reported to have paid €500,000 to sign him on loan from Spezia in the summer, with a further €2.5m required to make the deal permanent. The sporting director, Walter Sabatini, declared at full-time that he was already worth twice that figure, which might be overstretching it, but after scoring 13 times in 10 games for Roma’s youth team he was already one to keep an eye on before this weekend.
• Analogy of the week belongs to Roberto Mancini. Asked how good Inter were this season, he described them as “a Fiat 500. But the latest model, the slightly bigger one.” When a subsequent interviewer asked him to frame Juventus in that context, he called them “a Mercedes station wagon”.
• Two more goals for Gonzalo Higuaín, who now has six (six!) more than anybody else in the division. Marek Hamsik got one, too, ending his longest ever Serie A drought (1,392 minutes) with a penalty that just barely sneaked over the line after crashing down off the crossbar.
• It probably won’t surprise you to know that Juventus collected the most points of any Serie A team in this calendar year. But my guess is that many would not realise that Fiorentina will finish up second in those notional standings. The Viola finished out the year with a victory and another fine goal from Josip Ilicic.
• Vincenzo Montella finally has his first win as Sampdoria’s manager and, incredibly, Antonio Cassano played an important part, leading the line and setting up the first goal despite appearing to carry more than a few extra pounds around with him. That said, even Fantantonio in his pomp would have been proud of the finish that his 20-year-old team-mate Dávid Ivan came up with for the winning goal. And besides, I’m not much one to talk when it comes to waistlines. I’m off to eat my panettone. Buon Natale a tutti. See you in the new year.
Results Atalanta 1-3 Napoli, Bologna 2-3 Empoli, Carpi 2-3 Juventus, Fiorentina 2-0 Chievo, Frosinone 2-4 Milan, Inter 1-2 Lazio, Roma 2-0 Genoa, Sampdoria 2-0 Palermo Torino 0-1 Udinese, Verona 1-1 Sassuolo
