Two of the top teams in Serie A lined up for what most thought would be an extremely exciting match. A match that had all the makings of a classic, ended up being an absolute disaster.
This game started off very slow paced with each respective team feeling out the other. A few opportunities arose here and there but not to the extent that you would expect in such a big match. Lautaro Martinez started off the scoring for the day with a run in from Ivan Perisic on the left side of the goal. Perisic tried to pass the ball in and it ricocheted off a Lazio player right to Lautaro’s feet. He was cool and collected on the ball, took one touch and finished it past Lazio’s goalkeeper with ease. The next goal would come in the 54th minute of the match from Sergej Milinkovic-Savic. A phenomenal cross into the back post from Lazio’s center back Francesco Acerbi and then the ability of Milinkovic-Savic to jump over Ivan Perisic to head the ball in was spectacular.
Unfortunately, the rest of the game would be all downhill from there. In the 68th minute Arturo Vidal goes in on a challenge and subsequently clips Ciro Immobile’s ankle. Immobile then went down and Vidal proceeds to go over to tell him to get up. As he attempts to roll Immobile over Immobile slaps Vidal in the face. This leads to the ref making a very questionable decision in sending Immobile off with a red card. Yes a blatant slap in the face should be probably a yellow but the way Vidal went down after being slapped made it look like he’d just gotten knocked out.
The rest of the game slowed down dramatically after that point until the 86th minute. The ball was kicked out of the play in what was supposed to be Inter’s throw-in when Patric goes over to take the ball for a Lazio throw-in. Sensi pushes Patric away and Patric just makes an absolute spectacle of the push and goes down, this lead to Sensi getting a red card. Another absolutely ridiculous call from the referee and it was absurd how he handled the entirety of the match. This game could have been a thriller for the fans and it ended up being a disappointment with an unexciting 1-1 draw.
This match deserved better; the fans deserved better. This game should have used VAR to fix the mistakes that were made on the part of the refs. This game was an embarrassment and Serie A should do everything in their power to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
