The top teams in Serie A were boring, so let’s focus on little ones this week!

Let me start again by pointing out Siena’s abysmal performance: Alberto Malesani’s lads are now closer to avoiding relegation than ever.

Despite only drawing 1-1 against Parma at home, we have to consider that Siena keep getting points. They are still at the bottom of the league, and now they’re only one point below Atalanta and two behind Livorno.

The safe zone is only 5 points ahead. They can still hold onto their spot in Serie A.

As far as Champions League placement is concerned, Juventus leaped forward in the standings even more by winning against Fiorentina. The Brazilian Diego and Fabio Grosso secured an important victory for the Bianconeri, especially facing the upcoming Europa League match against Fulham. But Diego’s opening goal seemed to be offside, and resulted in lots of scrutinizing of the referee, which is usual in the Serie A. The bad news is that centre-back defender Giorgio Chiellini got an injury, and will certainly miss the match on Thursday as well as some other games in the upcoming weeks.

Juventus is now tied in 4th place in the league table, but actually it is in 5th because Palermo (important victory against struggling Livorno by 1-0, still Fabrizio Miccoli’s magic right foot on the news) won both the matches against Turin’s side. So Juventus has to finish ahead of Palermo to get into the Champions League.

Bari came back from behind to claim a 1-0 victory at home against Chievo, andBologna keeps on dreaming by reaching 34 points in the league table and almost securing its Serie A spot also for the next year: their 2-1 win at home against Napoli is simply marvellous.

Nil-nil between Atalanta and Udinese with Atalanta feeling just how close they are to relegation. Also, nil-nil was the result of the big match of the week that was played on Saturday night: Roma and AC Milan were not able to beat each other with AC Milan having the greatest opportunities to score and Roma the very last one with former Liverpool boy Jon Arne Riise. A fantastic save by Milan’s keeper Abbiati kept this one scoreless.

Inter were supposed to take advantage of their game with Genoa, but José Mourinho’s squad also got only a nil-nil result at San Siro. It was a very tactical match with Genoa defending very well, as well as Inter being not so dangerous until the last 20 minutes of the game. Inter’s lead is now 4 points on AC Milan; we will see next weekend what will happen. Remember, Inter will play on Friday night in Catania because of the Champions League clash against Chelsea next Tuesday.

Lazio is now in real danger: by losing 2-1 on Sampdoria’s pitch they now are in big trouble for relegation. Quite weird if you consider Lazio won the National Cup last year and the Italian SuperCup just last August against Inter.

Cagliari got an amazing draw 2-2 at home coming back with 10 men against Catania. Andrea Cossu was definitely the man of the match. It seems that Barcelona’s coach Pep Guardiola is trying to sign the little Cagliari midfielder for the next season.

And now, as usual, the best goals of the week.
Two of them come from the Serie B, Italy’s second division. First and foremost is Rolando Bianchi’s third goal for Torino. It’s beautiful even though he was quite alone in the box.

Then, Mauricio Pinilla. 
Grosseto’s striker had an amazing double against Brescia on Saturday, and the second goal is simply amazing. Pinilla scored 20 goals in 19 matches and is now scoring for the 12th game in a row: no one did so good in the history of Italian football. Before him only argentine striker Gabriel Omar Batistuta did something similar: he scored for 11 games in a row. You also have to know that Pinilla plays each week with back pain, so what he’s doing right now is simply outstanding.

Third goal to mention: Sampdoria’s Stefano Guberti long distance shot, absolutely brilliant.

That’s all folks: as usual, your comments and questions are more than the welcome!