Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Serie A down to the wire
James Richardson reports on happenings in Italy, where Juve's on the brink of capturing the league, Milan looks exhausted ahead of the CL Final, and an amazing 11 clubs are still candidates for relegation with two weeks to go in the season. He also narrates the apparently miserable Roma-Lazio derby:
Sunday's meeting of these two Roman sides - who between them have mustered a terrific one victory in the last two-and-a-half months - was billed in the capital as the Derby of Fear. Frightening it certainly turned out to be; the kick-off saw Roma's stand-in captain Antonio Cassano stun Lazio with a crafty flick to release Mancini, who fired on goal - only for Angelo Peruzzi to tip it wide. And that was it. Twenty-three seconds in, the only shot of the entire match. Roma and Lazio spent the entire remaining 89 minutes and 37 seconds (plus stoppage time) huffing and puffing but doing absolutely nothing to win the game, as the clock wound down and the fans wound up. It finished with the teams' sharing the points, 0-0.Ah, the Roman faithful. Even when they're not battling the police outside Stadio Olimpico, assaulting Totti on the pitch, giving Fascist salutes to Di Canio, or hitting referees in the head with missiles, they can be counted on to provide some kind of colorful display.
Not surprisingly, the 70,000 crowd - who'd turned up expecting a real Derby, like the 3-1 back in January - took a dim view of this, uniting as the second half wore on in chants of 'idiots, idiots', 'what are we doing here', and 'can this game be suspended too?'. Eventually Lazio's Curva Nord (whose banner midweek at training had read 'there are two ways to return from battle; with your enemies head or without your own') simply turned their backs on the spectacle en masse.
