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| | Friday 16 May, 2008 | | Blog: Title-tastic | | With everything still to play for, James Horncastle insists we are about to witness the most exciting weekend in calcio history |  |  | | This season has been a war of attrition fought on 16 different fields in a campaign stretching nine months. Inter, who were 11 points clear in February, have failed to fight off a rearguard action launched by Roma, which has taken the Giallorossi to within a point of the Nerazzurri.
Elsewhere, skirmishes have broken out for places in next year’s editions of the Champions League and Serie A, Milan are tussling with Fiorentina, while Catania are trying to break out of the relegation mire patrolled by Parma and Empoli.
The spoils are still to be had and nothing is set in stone as the Italian Championship enters its most exciting weekend in history. Derided by Premiership-centric journalists as boring, scoffed at by pundits proud of being able to pronounce catenaccio let alone understand contemporary Italian football, Serie A is putting on the most intriguing and entertaining finish to any League season.
Forget the statistics detailing how the Premiership has seen more goals than any of the other top European Divisions, ignore the smug, cognac swilling grins of English fans who point to their championship’s ‘exhilarating’ end, because nowhere, and I mean nowhere is it as finely balanced as on the peninsula written off as dishonest and corrupt.
Why? When have you ever seen two teams fighting it out for the title take on two sides wrestling to stay in the League on the final day of the season? Inter travel to the oldest and, perhaps, grandest stadium in the land to face Parma, humbled by financial irregularities and staff upheavals. Both teams have never been relegated from Serie A, and the Gialloblu, who are two points adrift of Catania and one clear of Empoli, could bow out of the top flight after an 18-year adventure, where, until the club’s collapse in 2004, they have averaged fourth place in Serie A.
The atmosphere couldn’t be more electric in Emilia given Inter’s habit of stumbling at the final hurdle. No other side has thrown the Scudetto away on more occasions, the Nerazzurri slipped up to Mantova in 1967 and then to a Lazio team that included Parma legend and Sunday starter Fernando Couto in 2002. Inter’s Coach that day was Hector Cuper, who was sacked by Parma on Monday because he might bring bad luck.
Roma encounter Catania, nicknamed the Elefanti, an inauspicious omen if ever there was one in Roman history. Hannibal, the Carthaginian warlord, smashed the Romans to smithereens between 203 and 218BC with an army replete with elephants. Can Catania Coach Walter Zenga – Inter’s greatest ever goalkeeper known as Spider Man – save his old club and the Rossoblu by using his Spidy skills to entangle Roma in a web of defeat? Or will Lupi Coach Luciano Spalletti become Sicily’s new ‘Lucky Luciano’ and edge out Inter in a close Parmesan shave?
Whatever happens, Italy should be proud of its spectacular championship after a difficult couple of years domestically and the thrills aren’t just confined to Serie A, just cast a glance down to Serie B…
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