Inter defender Danilo d’Ambrosio hailed coach Stefano Pioli’s clear orders as the key to the club’s remarkable turnaround since Frank de Boer was sacked.
Rightback D’Ambrosio opened the scoring as Inter cruised to a 3-0 win over bottom side Delfino Pescara 1936 on Saturday, notching up a seventh straight win that allowed them to leapfrog imploding SS Lazio into fourth in the Serie A table — eight places higher than when Dutch legend De Boer was ousted in November last year.
“Where would we be if he had arrived earlier? Who knows. I’m not one for ifs and buts,” the defender said. “We are just thinking about the future.”
Photo: AP
“Pioli has brought in very high-intensity training, we’ve improved so much physically and I can assure you we are working so hard,” he said. “The coach has been very clear in giving everyone their jobs to do. The first defenders are the forwards — and in this way he’s created a strong group.”
Pescara were buried by halftime as goals from D’Ambrosio and Portuguese midfielder Joao Mario put Inter on cruise control. Brazilian-born Italy striker Eder came off the bench to complete a comfortable win with just under 20 minutes left.
Inter’s next match is a Coppa Italia quarter-final tomorrow against SS Lazio, a team suddenly under pressure after a shock home defeat to mid-table AC Chievo Verona dented their hopes of European soccer next season.
Roberto Inglese’s 90th-minute strike, a scrappy close-range effort, saw Chievo snatch the points from a Stadio Olimpico clash in Rome that Lazio dominated.
Tempers boiled over after the final whistle when club captain Lucas Biglia was involved in an altercation with a fan hurling abuse at the players heading for the tunnel.
It was a second successive defeat for Lazio after Simone Inzaghi’s squad’s tame surrender at leaders Juventus the previous weekend and the suddenly under-pressure coach admitted he had his work cut out to turn things around.
“It is a defeat that will take its toll on morale, but as the head of this group I have to be big enough to get it off the players’ backs and get them going again,” Inzaghi said. “The only thing to say is that we have to be more efficient in front of goal. There are lessons here we can learn from and grow.”
“I don’t remember the moment, but ever since I was a kid, that’s the first thing I loved,” two-time NBA All-Star Isaiah Thomas said of his lifelong romance with basketball. However, that journey unfolded against the limitations of his size in a game where height often dictates opportunity — a reality he confronted throughout his career. At 175cm, Thomas is less than 2cm taller than the average Taiwanese adult male, while NBA players during his career stood at about 200cm on average. Compared with the NBA’s average career length of less than five years, Thomas’ 13-season career stands out as
Hans Niemann declares he would become a “stone cold killer” in a Netflix documentary released on Tuesday about his feud with five-time classical world champion Magnus Carlsen, a pledge that injects new edge into the lingering fallout from the cheating scandal that shook elite chess. “I’m gonna be a stone cold killer the rest of my life,” the US’ Niemann says in the film. “I’m going to become the best player in the world, and no one is going to believe that now, but this clip will play over and over again in 10 years — just wait.” “I just
Dakar and Rabat have longstanding ties, but relations have been strained since the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) final, which Senegal won in mid-January before being stripped of the title, which was transferred to Morocco. Now, the AFCON trophy is something of a thorn in the two countries’ sides. On Rue Mohamed V, the street where Moroccan vendors are based in the Senegalese capital, a police van is parked. “The police have been on high alert since the Confederation of African Football [CAF] decided to award the title to Morocco, but there have been no incidents,” a local resident said.
Top seeded Jessica Pegula on Friday once again fought back from a set down to reach the WTA Charleston Open semi-finals with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 win against Russia’s Diana Shnaider. Defending champion Pegula has lost the first set in all three of her matches at the tournament so far, but again dug deep to maintain her hopes of retaining the title. The world No. 5 from the US took 2 hours, 10 minutes to defeat 19th-ranked Shnaider, relying on a formidable service game that included eight aces. Shnaider battled well in the first two sets and broke early for a 2-0 lead
RSS