The front page of Monday’s Gazzetta dello Sport carries news of “A City in Crisis”. They have used that last word rather loosely. The pink paper’s reference was to the fact that both Milan and Inter had lost a day earlier, slipping to seventh and 12th in the Serie A table, respectively. It is the sort of footballing catastrophe that most Italian cities would be happy to endure.
In Genoa, the simple fact of having two teams in the top flight is viewed in positive terms. Both of the city’s leading football clubs have endured multiple relegations over the last couple of decades. Genoa and Sampdoria have each qualified for Europe during that spell, too, but not regularly enough for fans to take such successes for granted.
Expectations for this season were modest. Genoa’s manager, Gian Piero Gasperini, told reporters in July that “our first objective must be getting to safety”. Sampdoria’s Sinisa Mihajlovic was slightly more ambitious, stating that he wanted his team to “play out this season in the left part of the table”. In Italian newspapers, the league standings are traditionally split in two, with the top 10 clubs shown in the left side of a column and the bottom 10 on the right.
Even Mihajlovic, though, could not have predicted that both Genoese clubs would reach the middle of December looking down on their Milanese counterparts. For now Sampdoria sit sixth, one point clear of the Rossoneri, and with an opportunity to climb up to fourth if they can beat Verona away on Monday night. Genoa are even further ahead, in third, after defeating Milan on Sunday afternoon.
This is not how the story was supposed to unfold. Despite starting the weekend behind Genoa in the table, Milan had still been favoured by the bookies to win at the Marassi. Buoyed by a 2-0 win over Udinese at the end of November, Pippo Inzaghi went so far as to say that it would difficult for any team to be stronger than his.
Genoa were not daunted. They rarely are under Gasperini. The manager encourages his teams to play high up the pitch, press the opposition and force mistakes. That approach has reaped rich rewards for the Grifone on their travels, where opponents do not expect such aggression. Only Juventus have collected more points away from home this season and even the champions’ lone defeat came against Genoa in October.
Gasperini has always seemed to raise his game against the best. José Mourinho famously named him as the toughest tactician he had faced in Italy, comparing their matches to games of chess – each move met with an immediate and intelligent counter. Genoa have shuffled through at least five different starting formations already this season and pulled a surprise by reverting to a four-man defence against Milan.
That shape allowed Genoa to mirror their opponents all over the pitch, pairing up almost man for man. Although they made mistakes – most notably when Juraj Kucka’s errant touch allowed Jérémy Ménez to run clean through in the 28th minute, only to shoot straight at Mattia Perin – Gasperini’s team wore their opponents down with endless pursuit. “We unravelled,” confessed Inzaghi afterwards. “Genoa pressed a lot and the [bad] pitch meant we couldn’t play it on the ground.”
He is not the first to comment on the state of the turf at the Marassi, with even Genoa’s own Diego Perotti noting recently that the grass is far longer than he was used to from playing in Spain. However, Inzaghi could not use that as an excuse for the shoddy marking which allowed Luca Antonelli to head home the game’s only goal from a corner in the 32nd minute.
Antonelli is in many ways the embodiment of this Genoa team, a man who summed himself up in one interview last week as “a normal player, who plays with his heart and his balls”. Although he has seven Italy caps to his name, few would consider him elite. Yet what he lacks in talent, he makes up for with a great willingness to adapt and sacrifice for his team. Already this season, Antonelli has been deployed everywhere from the left wing to central defence. He is also Genoa’s captain and not short of ambition for his team. Asked about the prospect of facing Roma next weekend, Antonelli described the match as “uno scontro diretto” – an effective six-pointer between two teams chasing a place in next season’s Champions League.
In reality, the season is still young and Genoa have a long way to go in a race that is likely to take more twists between now and the end of May. But they are unbeaten in nine league games and their start deserves to be lauded. Not since the second world war had they held sole possession of third place this far into a Serie A season. Never had they held 26 points after 14 games – even adjusting to three for a win – over the same period.
Gasperini can feel some rightful vindication. Hounded out of Inter after just six games in 2011, he was accused of being wedded to a singular tactical vision that could not work at such a big team. Three seasons later, he is closer to making a return to the Champions League than the Nerazzurri are.
Sunday’s victory was his 100th in charge of Genoa – split between this tenure and his previous one at the club, between 2006 and 2010. He described it as his “highest moment” at the club. On this form, even greater ones could be on the horizon. But it will be no crisis if they are not.
