It was one of football's most successful midfield partnerships: on the one hand, the snarling, combative Gennaro Gattuso, and on the other, the thoughtful, elegant, unflappable Andrea Pirlo.
The pair formed the backbone of a memorable AC Milan team for more than a decade and helped Italy win the 2006 World Cup.
Lazio has tied down midfield star Luis Alberto to a new five-year contract.
Alberto has looked a player reborn since moving to the Italian capital from Liverpool, where he made just 12 appearances in a three-year spell. The Spaniard was a key aspect of Lazio's title charge last season which eventually fell short, seeing the Romans finish fourth. He finished the campaign with 15 assists in Serie A, behind only Atalanta's Papu Gomez.
Fourteen team members and staff of Serie A side Genoa have now tested positive for COVID-19, the club said in a statement on Monday.
Genoa had reported at the weekend that their Denmark midfielder Lasse Schone and goalkeeper Mattia Perin had contracted the virus.
ROME — Cristiano Ronaldo’s second goal of the night rescued a 2-2 draw for 10-man Juventus away to AS Roma in Serie A on Sunday, after Jordan Veretout had twice put the capital club in front. Veretout and Ronaldo netted penalties after both teams were penalised for handball, and the French midfielder then struck his second of the night in first-half stoppage time.
AC Milan made it two wins from two as Franck Kessie and Real Madrid loanee Brahim Diaz fired the Rossoneri to a 2-0 win over Crotone on Sunday. But Stefan Pioli will be worried about his striker options after a gruesome Ante Rebić injury suffered in the second half of Sunday’s win.
Rebić, a Croatian striker who scored 12 goals for Milan while on loan last season before making his move permanent, drew a first-half penalty that Kessie converted for a lead at the break. But Rebić only lasted about 10 minutes in the second half after suffering a freak arm injury.
A couple months ago, Chucky Lozano was kicked out of training, with the Mexico international looking like he was on the outs at Napoli. Two games into the 2020-21 Serie A campaign, however, he looks to be an integral piece in Gennaro Gattuso’s side.
MILAN — AC Milan's talismanic forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday and the 38-year-old responded in typically irreverent style, saying it was a bad idea for the virus to challenge him.
Milan said that Ibrahimovic, who will miss the Europa League match at home to Bodo/Glimt later on Thursday, was placed in quarantine at home and the health authorities had been informed.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s for the best that existence is chaos. The bedlam of it all allows for mobility, freedom and expression; it allows for the unpredictable moments that make it all worth while.
That’s not to say that all’s well with chaos: the tumult breeds disorder and confusion, and this frightens many people that demand a concise explanation for all things.
ROME — Serie A side AS Roma have been penalised with a 3-0 defeat for irregularly fielding player Amadou Diawara in the 0-0 draw against Hellas Verona last weekend, the league said in a statement on Tuesday.
Midfielder Diawara, who turned 23 in July, had not been included in the senior player list at the beginning of the season, even though he was no longer eligible for the under-22 list where he was named.
ROME — Italian prosecutors said on Tuesday they had evidence that the language exam taken by Barcelona's Uruguay striker Luis Suarez to obtain Italian citizenship ahead of a possible move to Juventus was rigged.
Suarez, whose wife is of Italian descent, passed the exam last Thursday at the University for Foreigners in Perugia.
It cleared the way for a fast-track citizenship approval which would mean Juventus could sign him without exceeding its permitted quota of non-EU players, but suspicions were quickly raised in the media that he was given preferential treatment.