Amid a breathless finish to the Serie A season, spare a thought for your narrators who don’t know where to begin. In Empoli, where Napoli surrendered their title bid by conceding three times in seven minutes to opponents who had not won a game since December? Or at San Siro, where Internazionale thumped a Roma side led by José Mourinho, the man who led them to the treble, and who arrived on a 12-game unbeaten run in the league?
Perhaps we should start in Rome, where Milan kept the title race alive with a 91st-minute strike from a 21-year-old midfielder who almost signed for Inter? Then again, was the most memorable image of this weekend not the one from Salernitana’s Stadio Arechi, where Davide Nicola threw his shoe in frustration before clutching it on the sideline and menacing his players to improve?
Even without such meme material, the manager deserves to be noticed. Nicola took over Salernitana in February, inheriting a team who were last Serie A with three wins from 23 games. They have doubled that number in the last eight days, beating Sampdoria, Udinese and Fiorentina. The same person previously rescued Crotone from the drop after sitting on 14 points after 29 games. He saved Genoa and Torino in the past two seasons as well.
How could our attention linger long on the bottom of the table, though, when there is so much happening at the top? Inter’s victory over Roma on Saturday felt at the time like a decisive step toward retaining their title, an emphatic 3-1 victory over opponents who had not lost a league game since January.