Previewing Serie A Clubs for the Rest of the Season (Part One)

It’s official! Serie A will be back on June 20th and I can’t be more excited! It’s definitely exciting to write about the current season, once again! So, here’s my article previewing Serie A clubs for the rest of the season (Part One).

 

Brescia

Despite having arguably the brightest prospect in Serie A, Brescia’s season has been disappointing. Now, I did predict they’d be relegated at the beginning of the season. However, to see last season’s leading Serie B goalscorer, Antonio Donnarumma, and Mario Balotelli underperform has been sad to see. As a result, there’s a good chance they’ll get relegated. Let’s see if they can recover and avoid relegation for next season. Of course, if relegation ends up happening.

Spal

For the previous couple of seasons, Spal has been able to narrowly avoid relegation to Serie B. However, so far this season they haven’t performed with that same fighting spirit that kept them up. As a result, they currently sit in 19th in the standings. Their main striker, Andrea Petagna has been superb with 11 goals in the current campaign. He’s even caught the eye of Napoli. As a result, he’ll join Napoli in the summer. If SPAL wants to stay up, they’ll definitely need to improve their performance

Lecce

Coming into this season, I expected Lecce to be relegated. They are performing like expected. However, they’ve had some massive results this season. Currently, they sit in 18th, tied in points with Genoa. They could very well avoid descending to Serie B. If they continue to shock some other clubs within the league, you never know. Also, their squad has one of the most underrated players in Serie A in Marco Mancosu. He could definitely lead them to staying up in Serie A. Of course, only time will tell.

Genoa

It’s sad to see such a historically great club in Serie A fall this far. Even, last season they avoided relegation by such a slim margin. I’m not sure exactly what they have to do in order to change their results week-in and week-out, but something has to change. It doesn’t help that they loaned out two bright young players in Christian Kouamé and Kevin Agudelo to Fiorentina in January. They definitely need to improve immensely if they don’t want to have to fight to stay up for the rest of the season.

Sampdoria

Coming into this season, I thought that Sampdoria were going to be one of the more underrated clubs. However, I was completely wrong! Instead, they’re fighting to stay in Serie A next season. They only sit 1 point above the relegation zone. What I thought was going to be a great season for Sampdoria under Eusebio Di Francesco, was a disaster. They’ve definitely been very underwhelming. It didn’t help that at the beginning of the season, they lost 6 of their first seven matches. Although, under Claudio Ranieri they’ve improved slightly. I’ll be sure to keep an eye on the blucerchiati as the season progresses.

There you have it! This is my article previewing Serie A clubs for the rest of the season (part one). If you haven’t already, be sure to follow me on Twitter @calciofanblogs1, on Instagram @calciofanblogs. Be sure to follow and like my Facebook Page, which is Calcio Fan Blogs. Additionally, if you would like to reach out to me via email, write to josephporco6@gmail.com or calciofanblogs@gmail.com.

My Preview of Napoli against Genoa

Coming into Saturday’s match, both Genoa and Napoli are going through some interesting times. Genoa recently hired Thiago Motta to be their new bench boss and seem to be feeling good lately. Whereas, Napoli seem to have been struggling on the pitch lately and the relationship between their upper-management and players has taken a bad turn. However, anyway you sum it up, it should be a beautiful game of calcio to watch. So, here’s my preview of this match for both clubs.

NAPOLI

Napoli are currently sitting at seventh in the Serie A table. They have also only won one Serie match in their last five. Add to that, all the drama that’s currently happening between Napoli’s board and players and you get a mini- crisis out of it. It is very possible that this club could go undefeated in their next 10 matches domestically, then this part of the season would be completely forgotten. But, right now it looks like a nightmare scenario for Napoli. Of course, there is still plenty of time for the season to unfold. But, it doesn’t look good for the partenopei. The thing that Napoli will need the most coming into this match, is for someone to step up and be clinical in front of goal, as that seems to be their most glaring weakness. We’ll see whether they can fix their lack of goalscoring.

GENOA

When Aurelio Andreazzoli got sacked a few games before by Genoa, it seemed as though they were on track to be relegated. Then, Genoa hired Thiago Motta as their manager. Now, I’m not saying he won’t get them relegated. But, Genoa looks like they’re playing a lot better. It also seems as though, Thiago Motta is getting the squad to play more technical and pass the ball around a lot more often. As a result of that, they’ve kept possession a lot more under Thiago Motta, so far. During the first 8 matches under Aurelio Andreazzoli, Genoa averaged 50.62% possession of the ball. Whereas, in his first three matches, Thiago Motta has gotten Genoa to average 58.67% possession of the ball. Albeit, it’s a very small sample size, but it looks like this style of play is already bearing some fruit for the rossoblu. Here is a great example of that last week against Udinese: