Sunday, March 22, 2009

Rossoblu defeat Udinese 2-0

The Rossoblu return to winning form with a solid 2-0 victory over me Udinese at Stadio Luigi Ferraris. With the victory they maintain their fourth place position in the table and are only four points behind AC Milan.

Without the services of Boško Janković, Gian Piero Gasperini utilized an attacking trident of Raffaele Palladino, Giuseppe Sculli and Diego Milito up top, with the former being nothing short of brilliant. The match started with a pulsating vision as Raffaele Palladino showed his grand promise as he immediately created the first scoring chance only to have Giuseppe Sculli squander it. However following that attempt Udinese showed why they have advanced to the final stages of the UEFA Cup as they greatly limiting Genoa's efforts with clinical defending and the match went to the break without a mark. As further kudos for the visitors performance it equally should be noted their introduction of Niki Zimling in his first match since joining Udinese from Esbjerg fB as well as the use of young Slovenian goalkeeper Jan Koprivec after Samir Handanovič went down to injury. The early stage of the second half saw the visitors come close but following that attempt Genoa switched to a 4-2-4 bringing in Rubén Olivera for Marco Rossi and on the hour, Raffaele Palladino's seeing-eye cross found Giuseppe Sculli who subsequently sent the ball in from six metres. With the one goal margin, Genoa was gifted a man advantage as Alexis Sánchez was shown a straight red-card. Udinese lacked the ability to go forward and as regulation time slowly ticked away it was Raffaele Palladino's creativity that created the second goal of the match, this time with his cross finding Il Principe for a straight forward finish.

Genoa return to play next Sunday as they travel to the beautiful Calabrese region to face Reggina.

Photo Credit: La Gazzetta dello Sport per ANSA/LUCA ZENNARO/DRN