Not so very long ago, Sassuolo’s biggest claim to fame was the San Marino captain Andy Selva. The veteran Sammarinese scored his last international goal some while back in Serie C1 with the Neroverde, but has returned to his homeland.
Meanwhile his former club have gone from strength to strength, not just reaching Serie A under Eusebio Di Francesco but landing some fairly prominent punches on the big names they’ve found there.
A look back at the last teams against whom the Neroverde have bagged four goals (or more) is instructive; Genoa, Fiorentina, AC Milan, Sampdoria, Varese, Ascoli, Cesena and Varese again — the side scored four times as many in Serie A as they did before their fabled promotion. That suggests a team who kept to their attacking guns even after their promotion.
Former Roma midfielder Di Francesco is known as a follower of Zdenek Zeman’s philosophy, and little in that record suggests any different.
So it should come as little surprise to note that even in the season Di Francesco’s side won Serie B, they lost at home to Grosseto, providing the Torrelli with their only away win in a disastrous season that saw them finish comfortably adrift and 20 points from safety.
The Neroverde’s Jekyll-and-Hyde nature has carried into Serie A. The legendary 4–3 victory against AC Milan last season was followed up by a run of seven straight defeats. This season, Sassuolo are yet to win, and have racked up their four points in draws as well as suffered another seven-goal rout by Inter.
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There appears to be neither rhyme nor reason to their performances, and even less logic to predict that after a defeats to Napoli and Lazio, Di Francesco would be able to rouse a determined draw from his troops against Champions Juventus.
Appearances, however, can be deceiving. During the thrashing by Inter it was perhaps not the Nerazzurri’s rattling in of goals that was Sassuolo’s biggest problem. For that game saw the dismissal of Domenico Berardi, who went on to miss the next three games with suspension.
Berardi is a big-ticket player, even moreso than Simone Zaza, despite the striker’s fine start to the season. The Juventus-owned youngster has been inspirational for Sassuolo since progressing through the club’s youth system. The three games he missed this season saw the Neroverde firing blanks — failing to score in all three.
There is further evidence to illustrate how Berardi’s influence permeates the entire Sassuolo attack, as good as they are. Of the 30 shots at goal in the three games the Italy Under 21 international was absent, only seven came from inside the penalty area (23%). The four games in which Berardi has featured produced 45 shots at goal, of which 58% were from inside the penalty area.
It stands to reason that more goals are scored from shots taken within the penalty area and, with Berardi in the team, Sassuolo are more than twice as likely to shoot from within the lines. His influence on Zaza — another player born on the coastline around the bay of Taranto — is even more noticeable.
Zaza has fired off a total of 10 shots this season; it is entirely noticeable that he had a grand total of zero in the games Berardi missed (nor the Inter game, perhaps unsurprisingly). Sassuolo’s form may be patchy and, even with Berardi in the side they were hammered by Inter but there is a distinct trend: if Berardi plays, Sassuolo plays.
A 20-year-old forward being the most important member of a primarily attack-focused team? Zeman must be looking across from Cagliari with a mixture of pride and envy.
Follow Marco Jackson on Twitter at: @MarcoJ
