End of January, football you don't expect. With the Champions League still a month away and the hot stages of the championships even further, the much-mistreated national cups will take care of it warm up the cold winter football.
And so, between Italy and Spain, between yesterday's sparkling Juventus and tomorrow's interesting Milan-Lazio, a very greedy Wednesday emerges: the Clasico Barcelona-Real Madrid, return of the Copa del Rey quarter-finals and yet another episode of the Mourinho-Guardiola challenge, and Napoli-Inter at the San Paolo, where Thiago Motta could perform for the last time in the Nerazzurri shirt before moving to Paris.
In short, a parade of stars on the Naples-Barcelona axis. Although in the Neapolitan challenge Lucio and Pazzini will be missing, influenced, and Ranieri will probably do some turnover in view of the comeback in the league. Mazzarri's men, on the other hand, now have little to ask of the standings, which sees them too far from the top and also from the Champions League area. Better therefore to devote himself to the Cup, or rather to the cups, given the next match in the round of XNUMX of the Champions League with Chelsea. However, the match promises fire and flames, given the importance of the stakes (a semifinal against the winner of Chievo-Siena…) and the previous one from last year which saw the Nerazzurri triumph at Napoli's home but only on penalties.
It promises even better the Camp Nou party, even if the qualification now seems archived for the Guardiola band, who in the first leg defeated Madrid once again (1-2), bringing Mourinho and his men on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The Real dressing room is increasingly divided and torn by thenightmare-Clasico, which with Special One on the bench out of 9 attempts has never been won. The Portuguese coach seems on the verge of losing the reins of command: tonight, rather than qualifying, perhaps the bench is at stake.
