Together with the Pitch/fork Instagram page we retrace the last month of our championship.
Lasting one day longer than usual, February also ended, the month in which the European cups start again and our championship often begins to take a well-defined shape in view of the spring. A month ago we left off talking about Mourinho’s dismissal, observing the Verona locker room slowly emptying and remembering the great Gigi Riva. It seems like a century has passed, how many events and transformations have occurred this monthbetween a championship fight that seems to have taken very specific lines, coaches who sadly leave and others who arrive with mixed fortunes and teams that never cease to amaze.
This month too we will tell you all about this without taking ourselves too seriouslyletting us give a hand from the Instagram page Pitch/Fork, who together with us combined each of the most relevant events of the last thirty days of Serie A with a song that tells it particularly well. Thus, 5 memes were born, as happened last month and as will happen on a regular basis in the coming months, in order to narrate the best of what happens in our championship through music and irony. As well as below, you can find the month of Serie A in five memes also on our Instagram page and on Pitch/fork.
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Five matches played in February: five wins, fourteen goals scored, three goals conceded. 48 total points which are worth fourth place in the standings, right in the Champions League zone. This is the incredible score with which the Bologna he shows up at the dawn of the new month, after having lived one of the best periods in its recent history. From day to day we expected a slowdown, a fall, the return of Thiago Motta’s team to the rhythms and positions it deserves. A February like this, however, dispelled all doubts about the strength of the rossoblù and their chances of fighting for Champions League qualification until the end, led by Orsolini, Ferguson, Zirkzee and their teammates.
Bologna is dreaming, therefore, and doesn’t seem to want to stop dreaming. And what better song than Dreams dei Cranberries to talk about dreams. Dolores O’Riordan’s voice talks about the feelings of a first love, how it changes you and what it means feel truly in love. For many in Bologna the rossoblù is their first true love and now the hearts of thousands of fans are in the hands of Thiago Motta’s team, which is flying towards heights unexplored for decades. “I want more / Impossible to ignore / Impossible to ignore / They’ll come true / Impossible not to do / Impossible not to do”. Now you can almost start whispering: yes, these dreams can come true.
Salernitana hires Fabio Liverani
Languishes in last place in the Serie A table Salernitana, which despite the return of Walter Sabatini to try to repeat the miracle of two years ago, does not seem to be showing great signs of life. In this general depression, on February 11th the head of Filippo Inzaghi, who had taken over from Paulo Sousa last October, was blown off. In his place, the Granata management chooses a coach who has been out of action for an entire season and fresh from two consecutive dismissals: Fabio Liverani. The first two results brought home by the Roman coach seem to confirm the lack of foresight of the choice: 4-0 defeat in Milan against Inter and 2-0 defeat at home against Monza. Twenty days have passed since he and Liverani were hired is already under discussion.
But who thought that hiring the former Lecce, Parma and Cagliari player was a good idea to aim for salvation? To put it to the Pine of Anjou: “What an idea! What an idea”. Back in the limelight thanks to the cover brought to Sanremo by BNKR44 – twenty years after the other brilliant cover, that of Flaminio Maphia – But which idea has the most suitable refrain to comment on the idea, probably considered spectacular by the Salernitana managers, to give a contract to a coach who has demonstrated on several occasions that he is not up to the standard of the top flight. “Can’t you see she’s not there”where “she” it’s Serie A apparently.
Napoli sacks Walter Mazzarri
It was the tragicomedy that accompanied the last months of Serie A. Walter Mazzarri recalled to the Napoli bench directly from another era, placed to coach the Italian champion team when his last experience had been a less than brilliant season in Cagliari between 2021 and 2022. Among forgotten names, lack of knowledge of opposing teams and Fantozzi events, the San Vincenzo coach collected four wins, three draws and five defeats in Serie A, fielding a team capable of scoring nine goals in twelve games, the antithesis of Spalletti’s exaggerated team last year. After the sad draw with Genoa last February 17th comes the decision: Walter Mazzarri is relieved of his duties.
Mazzarri’s absurd return to the future thus lasted just under three months, the time for a breath in football. As soon as you finish saying “hello”, it’s already time to say “goodbye”. Own Say Hello, Wave Goodbye, a 1982 song by Soft Cell, which reached the top of the charts in the United Kingdom, is the song chosen to tell the story of the separation between the Tuscan coach and Napoli. The song tells of a relationship that ended badly, of a “so-so” love, of two people absolutely not made for each other and of a man who wants to greet her as if they had never met. “It was a kind of so so love / And I’m going to make sure it never / Happens again” Soft Cell sing. And that’s what the Napoli fans also hope for.
Sassuolo is in free fall
In the beginning it was Chievo. Stable, immutable, unchangeable: he could not be relegated from Serie A, indifferent to everything that was happening around him. Then this baton was ideally passed to Sassuolo, who, except for sporadic peaks or collapses, had sat down on the sofa of the average Serie A with his feet on the table and a beer in his hand, allowing himself to churn out promising players one after the other. Zero pressure, a young coach, an overall interesting squad: this season too seemed to be able to flow as smoothly as the others. At the end of February, however, Sassuolo was third from last in the table and during the month they collected just one point, conceding 18 goals and scoring 6. Dionisi was sacked and the ferryman Bigica immediately lost 1-6 against Napoli. A descent into the abyss that doesn’t seem to end.
We all know what lies at the bottom of the abyss, namely Serie B, which Sassuolo has not tasted since the 2012/13 season and which they have never reached by falling from the higher division. A song from 2018 talks about a relegation to Serie B Francesca Michielinentitled precisely Serie B and inspired by Vicenza’s relegation to Serie B in 2001, the last year the Venetians spent in the top flight. In the song, the descent into the lower division is used as a metaphor for a great disappointment in love, but ultimately relegation itself is also a metaphor for the fans of a team. This time it could be the turn of the black-green supporters, who would experiment for the first time the fall from Serie A in a year definitely to forget.
Juventus can no longer win
On 4 February Inter and Juventus arrive at the direct clash at San Siro separated by just one point, Inzaghi’s team is solid and beautiful to look at, but one Juventus extremely cheerful and slyly approaching with narrow victories, ready to overtake. With February behind us, the distance between the two teams is 12 points, with the Nerazzurri now seeming unreachable. What happened? Simply, after the San Siro match against Juventus it got stuck, losing against Udinese, drawing against Verona and obtaining a hard-earned victory against Frosinone. With hindsight, the draw at the end of January with Empoli was a harbinger of the start of a difficult period for the Bianconeri, who in February they showed all their fragilities.
We can therefore say that Juventus has gone through a crisis, like the one Morgan sang about as leader of the Bluvertigo it is The crisisone of the band’s most famous songs, released in 1999. “I’m living in a crisis / And there’s always a crisis every time something goes wrong” the song recites at the beginning, and it is clear that something was wrong with Juve in February. However, crises are overcome, they pass, but they leave traces. Only March will be able to tell us if Juventus has emerged from the crisis and what the waste left by these latest bad matches is, and in that case we will always be able to rely on Morgan’s words, saying: “The crisis is ending and every time a crisis passes / Some trace remains”.