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The stage was set for a grand finale: five games to settle season-long battles at either end of the Serie A table. Top spot was decided – Inter claimed their 21st Scudetto at the start of this month – but there were four teams contesting two Champions League berths, while Lecce and Cremonese fought to escape relegation. All of them would play simultaneously. Or at least, that was the plan.
Among these five games was a derby between Torino and Juventus. As kick-off approached, supporters clashed close to the stadium. One, a 36-year-old Juve fan named Marco Leonardo Basoccu, was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery after suffering a head wound.
A rumour spread that he had been struck by a tear gas canister. Basoccu’s father told the newspaper La Stampa that he, too, had heard this version of events. Others offered a different account. The news agency Ansa reported Basoccu’s injury was “caused by a blunt object, likely a glass bottle”.
Either way Juventus-supporting Ultras entered the away section of Torino’s Stadio Olimpico demanding the game be abandoned. Players, led by the captain Manuel Locatelli, were called over to listen. Kick-off was eventually suspended for an hour.
The other four games began as scheduled. To do otherwise may have risked further public disorder, but now the fairness of the competition had been compromised. Remember that a rescheduling of the Rome derby, one week earlier, had led to a full-blown legal appeal.
In the end, that part did not matter. Results elsewhere meant Juventus, who began the day in sixth, could no longer qualify for the Champions League. Kicking off late did not confer any advantage.
Still, the spectacle of the final round had been tarnished before a ball was kicked. This has been a dismal year for Italian football, between the national team’s third consecutive failure to qualify for the World Cup and the underperformance of Serie A clubs in Europe. Now even the domestic campaign was ending on a grim note.
The persistence of violent incidents around high-profile games is already an unhappy place to start. Supporting your team should never come with the risk of hospitalisation. Doctors described Basoccu’s condition on Monday morning as stable, though he remained in a medically-induced coma.
What message does it send, beyond that, when a league cannot guarantee its own schedule? There is plenty of blame to go around, and we might reasonably ask if it was wise to let a derby be arranged as an evening kick-off in the final round. But, regardless of motivations, it cannot be healthy for a small subset of one team’s supporters to so easily impose a delay.
For the football to be overshadowed in this way is even more frustrating when the games themselves turned out to be highly compelling. The night began with Milan and Roma occupying the last two Champions League spots, both two points ahead of Como and Juventus. Serie A’s use of head-to-head tie-breakers left an array of different outcomes on the table.
Roma were away to relegated Verona, who had won only one game since Christmas, but did not make their task look straightforward. They struggled to carve out chances and almost conceded before half-time when the hosts’ Scottish forward Kieron Bowie span away from Daniele Ghilardi and stung the palms of Mile Svilar.
A red card for Verona’s Nicolás Valentini right after half-time, followed almost immediately by a penalty, finally set them on the right path. Lorenzo Montipò saved Donyell Malen’s spot-kick but Paulo Dybala returned the rebound to the Dutchman, who converted at the second attempt.
Roma kept their fans on edge a while longer. But the second goal, when it finally arrived, felt worth the wait. Stephan El Shaarawy made his debut under Gian Piero Gasperini at Genoa in 2008 and has since spent 10 years with Roma, split across two clubs. He is due to leave when his contract expires this summer but signed off by delivering the Giallorossi back to the Champions League – all while playing for that same manager who gave him his first break. Poetically, the clock showed 92 minutes, the same number El Shaarawy, born in 1992, has worn for most of his career.
Another of his former clubs, Milan, would join Roma, Inter and Napoli in the Champions League if they could win at home to 16th-placed Cagliari. Alexis Saelemaekers got them off to the perfect start, running on to Santiago Giménez’s flick to score in the second minute.
But they were undone at set-pieces, Gennaro Borrelli equalising from a corner before Juan Rodríguez made it 2-1 to Cagliari with a header from a free-kick. There was still more than half an hour for Milan to respond. But they didn’t.
Cagliari could have scored more. They moved the ball better, attacked with greater directness and – inexplicably – simply looked hungrier. The teenager Paul Mendy had a chance to put an exclamation mark on their triumph when he ran clean through late on, but he shot too close to Mike Maignan.
Milan’s defeat opened the door for Como. They were supposed to have the more difficult game, away to Cremonese, who needed to win and hope Lecce dropped points to prolong their stay in the top flight.
But Como were simply better. Cremonese showed grit, pulling a goal back after Jesús Rodríguez and Tasos Douvikas had given the visitors a two-goal lead, and the penalty that allowed Como to restore their two-goal cushion came from a debatable decision. There was no question, though, that Cesc Fàbregas’s team dominated, a 4-1 final scoreline reflecting the balance of chances.
The word count here is insufficient to do all these stories justice. Defeat saw Cremonese relegated, though in the end even a win would not have saved them, since Lecce beat Genoa 1-0. Como, in seven years, have climbed from the fourth tier up to the Champions League.
They have spent a lot of money, but plenty of others have done the same without producing such a coherent and compelling football model. Indeed, Como’s win was enough to guarantee their qualification even without knowing Juventus’s result, because they beat the Bianconeri home and away.
Igor Tudor was still in charge of Juventus for the first of those, and Luciano Spalletti is expected to be given the chance to continue in Turin. Massimiliano Allegri’s tenure at Milan looks a lot more precarious. But both these managers, whose experience was supposed to be the key to navigating a fierce battle, have stumbled badly down the stretch.
Serie A final weekend scores
ShowFriday Fiorentina 1-1 Atalanta
Saturday Bologna 3-3 Inter, Lazio 2-1 Pisa
Sunday Cremonese 1-4 Como, Lecce 1-0 Genoa, Milan 1-2 Cagliari, Napoli 1-0 Udinese, Parma 1-0 Sassuolo, Torino 2-2 Juventus, Verona 0-2 Roma
Next season will be the first since 1991-92 that neither club has qualified for Europe’s top club competition. The first time, in other words, since the Champions League became the Champions League.
These stories all interweave: the failings of those two clubs bringing them to this low ebb at the same moment that Roma and Como are trending in the opposite direction. Roma won their last five games of this season. Como took 13 points from a possible 15 in the same period.
Even in a bleak year for Italian football there are still bright notes like these to be found.
