Inter gave new coach Leonardo a flying start to his San Siro career with a 3-1 win at home to Napoli on Thursday as neighbors AC Milan moved five points clear at the top with a 1-0 win at Cagliari.
Former Milan boss Leonardo, who replaced Rafael Benitez, saw Thiago Motta grab a brace, while Esteban Cambiasso added the other to sink Napoli, who replied through Michele Pazienza.
Inter are still 13 points behind Milan in seventh, but they do have two games in hand.
PHOTO: EPA
Napoli dropped to third, six points off the leaders and just one behind SS Lazio, who drew 0-0 at Genoa.
Inter enjoyed the best possible start at the San Siro as brilliant one-touch play between Goran Pandev and Dejan Stankovic sent Motta through to hit a first-time volley beyond Morgan De Sanctis on three minutes.
Napoli had the ball in the net moments later, but Edinson Cavani’s close-range header was disallowed as Andrea Dossena had strayed offside before crossing.
However, they were level on 25 minutes when Pazienza headed home an Ezequiel Lavezzi corner.
Cavani then teed up Christian Maggio, who should have done better than drag his shot wide of the far post.
On 35 minutes, Diego Milito should have given Inter the lead, but he somehow spooned over from close range. Yet two minutes later they were in front, when Cambiasso arrived late and at pace in the box to head home Maicon’s cross.
Napoli’s Marek Hamsik stabbed wide an early second-half chance, before it was three when Motta sent a brilliant header into the top corner on 55 minutes.
Inter captain Javier Zanetti had the best chance thereafter, but he pulled his effort across goal.
Sierra Leone international Rodney Strasser pounced five minutes from time to score the only goal of the game in Sardinia as AC Milan beat Cagliari 1-0.
Controversial signing Antonio Cassano, on his debut as a substitute, slipped in the 20-year-old, who beat Michael Agazzi in the Cagliari goal.
It was Strasser’s first ever goal for Milan.
“Things look good after winning a tough game like today,” Milan coach Massimiliano Allegri said.
“Most of all with a goal from a young lad who’s come through our youth section, I think we have reason to be pleased and I’m pleased with the table and for having started the year a little better than we finished the last one [with a 1-0 home defeat to AS Roma],” he said.
Roma leapfrogged Juventus — beaten 4-1 by Parma — into fourth as they came back from 2-1 down to beat Catania 4-2 in Rome thanks to doubles by Marco Borriello and Mirko Vucinic.
On-loan forward Sebastian Giovinco sent out a message to his regular employers Juventus as he scored a brace for Parma.
Having struggled for the last couple of years to establish himself at Juventus, Giovinco went on loan to Parma this season in a bid to find first-team soccer.
He came back to haunt his permanent employers with a well-taken double that badly hit Juve’s title chances as they dropped to eight points behind leaders Milan.
Following Giovinco’s brace, Juve centerback Nicola Legrottaglie pulled a goal back, but Hernan Crespo’s penalty sealed the three points, before substitute Raffaele Palladino’s stoppage-time finish added insult to injury.
Juve were eventually overrun largely due to playing most of the game with 10 men following Brazil midfielder Felipe Melo’s sending off for violent conduct after only 17 minutes.
At the bottom of the table, basement-sitters Bari boosted their slim hopes of survival by winning 1-0 at second-bottom Lecce, while Cesena climbed out of the drop zone with a 2-1 win at Brescia, who replaced them.
In Thursday’s other matches, Bologna drew 1-1 with Fiorentina and Palermo beat Sampdoria 3-0 at the Stadio Renzo Barbera, while Udinese scored twice in the first half to see off Chievo 2-0.
Additional reporting by staff writer
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier