(AFP) - Sassuolo served both Inter II and Lazio III, by dropping Roma in their stronghold 3-4 on Sunday in the twenty-sixth stage of the Italian Football League .
The opportunity existed for Rome to prepare well to face its neighbor Lazio next Sunday and to take advantage of the latter’s stumbling in front of Bologna (0-0) on Saturday in order to remove it from third place, and also to become at the same distance from Inter II, which opened the stage on Friday by falling to Spezia (1-1). 2).
But Sassuolo surprised the capital club and brought it down in its stronghold after it scored four goals, thus ending the series of matches that "Galurusi" played with a clean sheet at home in the league since the beginning of the new year.
Instead of being at the same distance from Inter, Roma fell to fifth place, on goal difference, behind Milan, the defending champions, who meet Monday with Salernitana.
And in the absence of his Portuguese coach, Jose Mourinho, who began serving a two-match ban as a result of his expulsion in the previous stage in a 2-1 loss to Cremonese, Roma started the match in the worst possible way after he found himself lagging behind with two clean goals scored by Frenchman Armand Llorente (13 and 18).
But the Polish Nikola Zalewski brought the capital club back to the atmosphere of the match (26), before Albanian Marash Kumbola gifted the guests a penalty kick because of which he sent off Domenico Berardi in the forbidden area, so that the latter would successfully pass him (4 + 45).
The capital club put Argentine Paulo Dybala in between the two halves after he started the match on the bench, and the former Juventus star managed to reduce the difference with a beautiful shot from outside the area (50).
However, the guests struck again through Andrea Pinamonte after a pass from Llorent (75), confirming the first-ever victory for his team over Roma in the capital and only the second out of 20 confrontations that brought together the two teams in the first division, despite the Dutch captain Jorginho Wijnaldum’s ability to reduce the difference late ( 4+90).
In Turin, Frenchman Adrien Rabiot played the role of the savior and led Juventus to restore its balance after the fall of the last stage against Roma (0-1), by scoring a double in the hard-fought 4-2 victory over bottom club Sampdoria.
After two participations for a few minutes in the matches of the last two stages against Turin (2-4) and Roma, French midfielder Paul Pogba returned to miss Juventus due to an injury that delayed his official start with his new-old team for many months.
The Frenchman was supposed to participate in Sunday’s meeting after he missed the second leg of the “Europa League” final on Thursday against Freiburg (1-0) for disciplinary reasons, but a muscle injury kept him out of the squad, according to what was reported by the Turin giants, who also missed his Argentine star, Angel Di Maria. Federico Chiesa and Brazilian Alex Sandro were injured and Moise Kean was suspended for being sent off against Roma seconds after entering.
Despite the absences, Massimiliano Allegri's team started the meeting promisingly, after advancing with two headers from the Brazilian Bremer (11) and Rabio (26).
But two goals in just 72 seconds, through Tomazo Ojello (31) and Serbian Philip Djorcic (32), launched the match from scratch, amid the shock of the "Allianz Stadium" fans.
Rabio returned to impose himself as the champion of the meeting with his seventh goal this season in the league after a pass from Nikola Faguli (64), then the Serbian Dusan Vlahovic got the opportunity to score the fourth goal for the owner of the land from a penalty kick that Colombian Juan Cuadrado snatched, but he hit the post (69).
The result remained the same until the last seconds before Argentine substitute Matias Sole added the fourth with a header (4 + 90), confirming the victory with which Juventus raised its score to 38 points in seventh place until further notice, pending the outcome of the appeal submitted to restore the 15 points that were deducted from his balance for accusing him. falsifying financial statements.
And after his visit to Freiburg on Thursday in the second leg of the Europa League final, Juventus will face a grueling test in Milan against Inter on Sunday in the next stage in a “rehearsal” for his confrontation with “Neratsuri” in the semi-finals of the cup competition.
Fiorentina continued its positive results in recent times by achieving its fifth successive victory in all competitions, and it came at the expense of its host, bottom club Cremonese, 2-0, raising its score to 34 points in eleventh place, by a point ahead of Montsa, who tied with its host Hellas Verona eighteenth, 1-1. .
Turin strengthened its chances of continental participation next season by defeating its host Lecce 2-0, raising its score to 37 points in ninth place, a point behind its arch-neighbor Juventus.