A goal from the Argentine Giovanni Simeone, son of Atlético Madrid manager Diego Pablo Simeone, was not enough this Saturday to avoid the defeat (2-1) of Cagliari, who has gone twelve games without a win, in the field of a Hellas Verona who dreams of Europe, in a duel corresponding to the twenty-sixth day of Series A.
Hours after Parma and Torino tied 1-1 in the first Italian league game after more than 100 days of stoppage due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Cagliari surrendered in the Veronese Bentegodi stadium against the newly promoted Verona, who occupies the seventh position and struggles to get into the Europa League.
The Croatian coach Ivan Juric's Verona had a great start to the game and took a double advantage in the first 26 minutes pushed by a Samuel Di Carmine irrepressible, who signed the 1-0 header and 2-0 with a real goal to the squad from 20 meters.
However, the Veronese party was complicated in 35, when Fabio Borini saw the red card, after VAR review, for a hard foul on the Croatian, ex-Sevilla player, Marko Rog.
It was Giovanni Simeone, with his seventh goal of the year, that gave hope to Cagliari, in which the new coach, Walter Zenga, hired on Saturday on the bench, hired in March a few days before the season was interrupted because of of the pandemic.
Cagliari fought with dedication, but his hopes were diluted when, with twenty minutes to go, he was left with ten men for the double warning to Luca Cigarini.
With this victory, Verona placed just one point behind Naples, sixth, in the European zone, while Cagliari, who has four consecutive defeats and is twelfth, continues in free fall.
In the other match played this Saturday, the
Torino and Parma
tied 1-1
in the Olympic Stadium Grande Torino, with goals from Cameroonian Nicolas N'Koulou to center of the Spanish Alejandro Berenguer for the local advantage and tie of the Slovakian Juraj Kucka.
In celebration of the first goal, N'Koulou knelt to protest against the death of George Floyd, the African American killed by a police officer in Minneapolis (United States).