Napoli fans showed their support for Kalidou Koulibaly during their side’s 1-0 win over Carpi after the defender was racially abused during Wednesday’s match against Lazio in Rome, which prompted the referee to momentarily stop the game.
Fans throughout Napoli’s San Paolo stadium held up photos of Koulibaly to demonstrate their love for the 24-year-old.
Francesco Totti was an unused substitute for Roma’s 2-0 win against Sassuolo, but he did still manage to keep himself entertained. First, he enlisted a ball boy to help him warm up, giving the kid a story to tell for the rest of his life in the process.
Ashley Cole’s brief spell at Roma has come to an end. With Arsenal, he won two Premier League titles and three FA Cups. With Chelsea, he won one Premier League title, four FA Cups, and a Champions League title. And with Roma, he was in that one picture where he stood an awkward distance from the rest of his teammates that became a meme.
But his time in Italy was so much more than that one image. Let’s take a fond look back on the end of an era…
Just six months after moving to Milan in an €8 million deal, Luiz Adriano was the subject of a €14 million agreement between Milan and Jiangsu Suning. With Chinese Super League clubs throwing around increasingly ridiculous sums of money for seemingly random players, this development wasn’t all that surprising, especially since Milan are developing a habit of quickly unloading strikers who don’t immediately meet expectations.
Mario Balotelli is a man who is intimately familiar with crazy. Throw darts at youth team players? Done it. Letting friend set off fireworks in the bathroom of a rented mansion? Yep. Show up early to training and urinate on teammates’ boots? Of course.
So when Mario questions your sanity for getting his name and shirt number tattooed on your back, you know you’ve made a regrettable life choice. At least the rest of us know where to draw the line now, though.
“@Marcocalcio22: From bad to worse Felipe Melo sent off for this Karate Chop on Lukas Biglia pic.twitter.com/G1fGmH0q9M” IDIOT!
— petrichor (@glossolalia69) December 20, 2015
Felipe Melo, who you might remember as the man who used Arjen Robben as a doormat during the 2010 World Cup, is still finding creative ways to assault people with his feet after all these years. During Inter’s Serie A match against Lazio, Melo was shown a straight red for proving that he could use Lucas Biglia’s shoulder as a foot rest.
Inter lost 2-1.
This has been the Dirty Tackle of the Day: a chronicling of unfortunate events.
If anything is deserving of a mid-match beer, scoring twice in a span of six minutes to give your side a 3-2 lead is probably it. And since that’s what Massimo Maccarone did for Empoli against Bologna, scoring just before and just after halftime, he ran to the stands and swiped a beer for a cheeky sip.
Previously: Toronto FC goalkeeper takes a sip of a fan’s beer after win
Everything was going so well for Lazio keeper Federico Marchetti in Monday’s match against Sampdoria. He was working on a clean sheet late in the second half when Alessandro Matri scored to put Lazio up 1-0. Thrilled by this turn of events, Marchetti sprinted out of his area to try and celebrate with his teammates, but something went wrong. Very, very wrong.
The bags of manure dumped outside Formello by #Lazio fans today in new protests against Lotito… pic.twitter.com/G2hWb5XZKU
— Alasdair Mackenzie (@olimpiacalcio) December 11, 2015
Upset that Lazio haven’t won a league match since October, fans dropped off 10 bags of manure at the club’s training ground. Are they convinced that helping the players train on a better fertilized pitch will help them win? No, they had a different use in mind for all that manure.
From Football Italia:
Ten bags of manure were dumped outside the training ground, accompanied by a banner reading: “You want to make us drown in [expletive]. But first we want to make you eat it.”
A second banner insulted Lotito, with the fans also signing songs decrying the Aquile President.
This protest follows Roma fans’ training ground delivery of carrots last week (because their team played like scared rabbits, you see). Who knew the people of Rome turn so agricultural when they get angry?
Paul Pogba played Juventus’ 2-0 win against Atalanta with a hand written addition to the back of his shirt. Next to the No. 10, he wrote in a “+5.” But why? Did he decide that he prefers the No. 15 just before kickoff? Was it some kind of psychological warfare against his opponents? A tribute to the Jackson 5? What could it be?