The Serie A finale brought the title back to Naples and different kinds of joy to the teams that qualified for Europe or escaped relegation to Serie B. Who threw confetti and who found heartbreak on the final day in Italy? Read on.
Serie A Winners
Romelu Lukaku and Scott McTominay
scudettoNapoli’s capping winNino D’AngeloLorenzo Venturino
The Genoa winger wears number 76 and turns 19 next month. The kid was given his first full start against Bologna, and he’ll never forget it, because he scored two goals, including a spectacular one where he got back on the ball after it was slide-tackled away from him and shot it first time past Łukasz Skorupski. That performance in a big win for Genoa will send him into training camp full of confidence.
Parma and Lecce
They both escaped relegation with thrilling wins. The team from Emilia-Romagna gave up two goals in the space of five minutes to Atalanta’s Daniel Maldini, but Parma came all the way back in the second half, with Jacob Ondrejka scoring two goals of his own, including the game-winner deep into stoppage time.
They only needed a draw, but Lecce needed a win on the road against Champions League-chasing Lazio. It was looking bleak for them at the end of the first half, when both Santiago Pierotti and Ante Rebić were red carded and reduced the Wolves to nine players. However, Wladimiro Falcone stood tall in his goal and made a number of great saves to make Lassana Coulibaly’s goal stand up. The win plus the losses suffered by Empoli and Venezia gave Lecce another year’s lease in the top flight.
Manuel Locatelli
In a game where Juventus needed all three of the points, they were tied at 2-2 when Venezia’s Hans Nicolussi Caviglia tripped Francisco Conceição just inside the penalty area. You want a cool head in this situation, and Juventus’ captain curled the penalty into the top corner to secure fourth place and Champions League soccer for the Old Lady.
By the way, Nicolussi Caviglia is on loan from Juventus, but before you start firing up conspiracy theories, you should know that Venezia is obligated to buy him during the offseason, so he’ll be plying his trade in the second division with them. No wonder he looked distraught after referee Andrea Colombo signaled for the penalty.
Fiorentina
Their victory over Udinese was helped by Jaka Bijol’s red card reducing their Abbruzese opponents to 10 players. That plus Lazio’s loss means that la viola go to the Europa Conference League next season.
Serie A Losers
Empoli and Venezia
In Empoli’s case, they simply ran into another team that was also fighting potential relegation, and Hellas Verona edged them out to send them down. Venezia’s case is more frustrating, as they were good enough and organized enough to trouble the top teams but couldn’t bank enough points against either them or the other teams at the bottom to stay up. Both of these teams came up to Serie A in 2021, and now they go back down together.
José Manuel Reina
The Como goalkeeper had already announced his impending retirement after the season, and that came early when he committed a red-card foul on a breaking Mehdi Taremi in the first half. He joins Zinédine Zidane, Gerard Piqué, Mark van Bommel and Edgar Davids as greats who were sent off in the last games of their careers.
Inter Milan
Won the game at Como, but lost the title to Napoli. It’s too harsh to say they choked away the title; they lost to Bologna and Roma while drawing against Lazio, all of which are good teams. Nevertheless, the nerazzurri will rue some of those results. If they don’t win the Champions League final, this will be a nearly-there season for them.
Bologna
The rossoblú ended the season winless in their last five games and slid out of the Champions League spots to ninth place. This still goes down as a successful season for Bologna because of their Coppa Italia win, and they are terrifically entertaining under Coach Vincenzo Italiano. Yet I wonder about the sustainability of his Italian take on the German gegenpressing system. It allowed them to notch some big results like the win over Inter last month, but maybe their late-season slide and their Champions League group-stage exit shows that “entertaining” is their ceiling. They won’t have European football to distract them next season, so we’ll see how they do with fewer games to play.
AS Roma
There were a lot of positives to take away from their pain-free 2-0 win over Torino: The three points snagged them the Europa League spot in sixth place, and Lazio’s loss to 10-man Lecce meant that the giallorossi finished ahead of their Roman rivals, which honestly might mean more to Roma’s fans than the Europa League.
Still, the win was the last game for coach Claudio Ranieri, who is headed for a well-deserved retirement at 73 years old. His itinerant career saw him manage 19 different teams in four different countries and win an unlikely English Premier League title with Leicester City. (The day he won that honor, he was in Rome celebrating his mother’s 90th birthday by having lunch with her.) He trusted his players to act like mature adults, and that faith was occasionally rewarded with shoddy losses and lax effort. Nevertheless, fans all over Europe will miss this coach who showed that nice guys sometimes do win.