It’s like 2010 again.

January 10th, 2012 | by: gadsby | Comments Off

"I was born like this, I had no choice"

Once again, the Serie A has resumed after a long, cold winter, starting off once more with Franco Colomba’s final game at Parma, a 5-0 defeat against an Inter side that has now won five games on the trot and lie in 5th place in the table, a point behind Lazio, who have been dealt a 4-0 gubbing by the club that Mattia Destro plays for. Elsewhere, Milan laid waste to Atalanta, Bologna edged out Catania at the Renato Dall’Arra, Roma won a decisive 2-0 against Chievo, Juventus squeaked through against Lecce, Udinese demolish lowly Cesena, Cagliari tossed Genoa on the rocks of football, and Fiorentina put three past Novara to round off a week that, with the exception of a few matches, looked like something out of 2010. In the jovial spirit of that rather dreary annum, I will seek to wind back the clock and take a look at where we were this time last year.

Week 18 (week 17 fell strictly under the jurisdiction of 2009) of the 2009-2010 Serie A was a sort of calm before the storm, with Fiorentina and Inter’s champions league campaigns and Parma and Cagliari’s surprise title challenges providing a pleasant counterbalance to the meltdown that was just beginning at Ciro Ferrara’s Juventus, and Italy’s disastrous World Cup campaign in… the country to the south of Botswana later that year. Claudio Ranieri’s Roma were yet to approach their zenith this season, lying in fifth, 13 points off winter champions Inter. It was a time when Andrea Rannochia and Leonardo Bonucci played together at Bari, when Susy Campanale wrote regular incendiary pieces about Inter on Football Italia, when the name “Gian Piero Gasperini” could still conjure up a few shreds of respect, and Julio Cesar was considered by many to be one of the best goalkeepers in the world.

Week 18 opened with a 2-0 win for Napoli against Atalanta, with goals by Michele Pazienza and Fabio Quagliarella, currently of Juventus. We would also see Giampiero Ventura’s high flying Bari side down relegation battlers Udinese 2-0. How things change…

Elsewhere, Massimiliano Allegri’s Cagliari side would convert twice in the 90th minute to snatch a point at Roma in a 2-2 draw, while another island club in Catania would score late against Bologna to continue their unlikely revival. Up north in Verona, Inter would snatch a typical Mourinho “grinta” win against Chievo, with the only goal coming from Mario Balotelli, deployed in this match as an inside forward. Lazio, another relegation struggler, would shock everyone, mostly themselves, by thrashing Livorno 4-1. Leonardo’s David Beckham inspired Milan would be at their peak, thrashing Genoa 5-2, while Juventus would claim a somewhat surprising 2-1 victory over Parma. Back in Genoa, Palermo would draw with Sampdoria, with the goals going to Edinson Cavani and Antonio Cassano. Fiorentina would thrash Tuscan rivals Siena 5-1 to round off a typical week in the 2010 campaign.

What would happen next is generally well known, I don’t need to repeat it. Inter would win the treble, Italy would be unmentionable at the World Cup, Alberto Zaccheroni would take over at Juventus and lead them to seventh place. Despite all this, what a season it was…