Rome (AFP)
Swiss substitute striker Noah Okafor gave his Milan team a fatal victory, over host Udinese 3-2, within the twenty-first stage of the Italian Football League, which witnessed a positive start for the new Roma coach, Daniele De Rossi, by defeating Verona 2-1.
In the first match, racism once again dominated the atmosphere of the “Serie A” matches, when the referee stopped the match in the 38th minute, after some of the home fans launched racist chants, by continuously imitating the image of monkeys against Milan’s French goalkeeper, Mike Maignan, which prompted the “ The Rossoneri » left the field to express their anger.
A warning was issued to the fans, in order to stop the abuse, after Minyan initially complained to the referee about the chants against him, but the fans continued their offensive chanting to stop the match.
The match resumed 5 minutes later, with Milan writing on its account: “There is certainly no place for racism in our game: We are angry, we are with you, Mike.”
After English striker Ruben-Loftus-Cheek opened the scoring for Milan (31), the hosts responded with two goals, the first before the end of the first half, through Serbian Lazar Samardzic (42), and the second thanks to Frenchman Florian Thauvin (62).
Milan equalized through the Serbian “substitute” Luka Jovic (83), before snatching the three points, with a fatal goal from the other Swiss “substitute”, Noah Okafor (93).
Milan strengthened its position in third place, with 45 points, 4 points behind second-placed Juventus, and 6 points behind leaders Inter, who have one less match to play.
The former Roma legend and his new coach, De Rossi, successfully began his adventure at the helm of the capital team, succeeding Portuguese coach Jose Mourinho, where he succeeded in winning three points.
Roma scored two goals in the first half, thanks to Belgian Romelu Lukaku (19) and Lorenzo Pellegrini (25), before Verona reduced the gap through Michael Folorunshu (76) to make up for his Bosnian teammate Milan Djuric missing a penalty kick ten minutes earlier, and Roma raised its score to 32 points. In eighth place, while Verona's balance froze at 17 points in eighteenth place.
Roma's new coach said, “If we played better in the second half, people would definitely be more happy at the end of the match, but we won. We got the three points and we must celebrate the victory. We must re-inject enthusiasm in Roma.”
De Rossi played 616 matches over 18 seasons between 2001 and 2019 with Roma, during which he scored 63 goals. He is the second most defensive player behind team icon Francesco Totti. De Rossi retired in 2020, after a short professional career, and for a few months in Argentina. In Boca Juniors colours.
He has little experience as a coach, which he started managing the club for a few months (2021-22), before taking over the technical management of SPAL, for only four months last season between October 2022 and February 2023, when it was then playing in the second division and was eventually relegated to the third division. SPAL played 17 matches, led by De Rossi, 17 of which they won only three.
#Milan #angry #Mignan