One of the players playing extremely well at the moment is Genoa fantasista Raffaele Palladino. Palladino has always been a player that could do things with the ball that others could only dream of doing, but he never had the consistency to show that talent at a high level.

Roma-Inter from May of 1999 is another highly entertaining game from one of the most entertaining Serie A seasons of all time. The 1998-99 season had 3 leaders of the table (for the first part of the season it was Fiorentina, who were winter champions but were then hurt by the injury of Batistuta, then Lazio, who looked on their way to the Scudetto but fell off form towards the end, and then Milan who surprised everyone and stole the Scudetto on the last day).

A few nice goals this week, but nothing extraordinary. Giuseppe Mascara scored one of his trademark wonder-goals, and Marco Borriello got back on the scoresheet with 2 goals (the second a nice scissor kick) after almost a year. Diego Milito got back to his scoring ways as well after being absent through injury, and Mirko Vucinic finally scored his first goal of the season.

Napoli won vs. Juventus in Torino for the first time since November 20, 1988, when Maradona's Napoli won 5-3. Since then, there had been 11 wins and 5 ties, and Napoli hadn't scored in Torino since March of 1998. This Napoli side has been rejuvenated under Walter Mazzarri, and they have shown they have a never say die attitude that keeps them working for the full 90 minutes.

Fabrizio Miccoli has really become the undisputed leader of Palermo. The diminutive fantasista, or il Romario del Salento as he is so aptly nicknamed, has been putting in great performances this season and had a great year last season, and it looks like he has finally found a place to show all of his talent.

Although we are only 10 games into the season, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar is starting to look more and more like a big flop. 15 million euro were spent on the Dutch striker, and even if he reaches 5 goals this season it would seem like a big achievement. Sure you can say that he needs time to adapt to a new style of play, new language, new culture, but it's already November almost and we still have not seen Huntelaar's name on the score sheet.

I didn't put up a Weekend Round-up yesterday because I figured with the midweek round tomorrow, it would be pointless to update everything twice. So we'll dive in straight to Goals of the Week. Not as great as last week, but still some good goals, especially Daniele Mannini's one-time volley vs.

The Great Serie A Game posts continue with Roma-Juve 2003/2004. The 2003/2004 season was an interesting one. Milan, fresh from a Champions League victory and with some new young Brazilian player named Kaka, were dominating Serie A. While Marcello Lippi's Juve looked to be favorites to combat the Rossoneri to the Scudetto, it was not the case.

This is going to be a good goals of the week post. There are many nice goals, and in particular the goals from Stankovic and Dessena are awesome to watch. Goals after the jump.

Dejan Stankovic vs. Genoa Stankovic notices that Amelia makes an error on the clearance and moves to the right, hitting the ball on the volley from way out and it sailed over Amelia and into the net.

The picture on the left is the photo sequence of Dejan Stankovic's 54 meter long strike vs Genoa on Saturday. Marco Amelia messed up his clearance, and Stankovic coordinated a beautiful volley that sailed over Amelia and bounced into the net. Goals from midfield are always nice to look at.

After the international break, the man of the moment is undoubtedly Alberto Gilardino. The Fiorentina striker scored 4 goals in 2 matches with the Azzurri, including the impressive hat trick in 14 minutes vs. Cyprus. He now has 16 goals in 38 appearances (now level with Gianluca Vialli and Luca Toni) for the Azzurri and looks to be the headline striker heading into South Africa this June.

First, the international week is incredibly boring. Second, I thought I'd start a new post here on the Italy Offside: Great Serie A games. A post that will show videos of some of the greatest Serie A games of all time. For the first post I decided to stay fairly recent. We go back to the 2004/2005 season.

As everyone knows by now, Roberto Donadoni was relieved of his duties as Napoli manager and was replaced by former Sampdoria boss Walter Mazzarri. We can't deny that Donadoni was one of the greatest wingers Italian football has ever produced. But his managerial career so far? Not great. We really don't know where Donadoni is at as a manager or if he will ever improve.

Sorry I didn't get up a weekend round-up yesterday, it was a really busy day. However I don't want to disrupt the weekly order so I'll go straight to Goals of the Week. Last week was probably the worst goals of the week post of all time. I think this week made up for it with some quality strikes.

This was an interesting story I came across today. Apparently there is a "Little Italy" of sorts in the Bulgarian First Division (official named the Bulgarian TBI A Professional Football Group, which is ridiculous), as Bulgarian club PFC Botev Plovdiv is owned by an Italian owner, has an Italian chairman, an Italian-Congolese sporting director, an Italian manager, and a roster that contains 10 Italian players (soon to be 11).