Claudio Ranieri faces his latest Rome derby on Sunday when he leads Roma on a charge for the Champions League before finally, sailing definitively in the distance. Veteran coach Ranieri dragged Roma to only four points behind the four main positions of Serie has since retired in November, when his childhood club seemed to go to the relegation zone. The conflict of this weekend with colleagues hunters of the Lazio Champions League is a key moment in a tight battle for two places in the Europe Elite Club competition, with Inter Milan and Napoli to challenge the Scudetto.
The Roma are seventh, two points behind the sixth, the Lazio, with seven games to play in the season, and have not lost a league match since their lamentable defeat in Como in mid-December.
A 1-1 draw with Juventus last weekend put an end to a sequence of seven consecutive victories, but the performance underlined to what extent Roma has arrived since Ranieri became their third manager of the season after Daniele de Rossi and the disastrous reign, but fortunately short of Ivan Juric.
Ranieri should withdraw for a new summer coach, but the 73 -year -old success as a stopgap was such that he has faced frequent calls to postpone his retirement more for another season, which he insists that he will not do.
After the Roma’s draw with former Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon asked Ranieri why he would not reconsider, calling for his insistence to dismiss “absurd” given the reversal he has mastered.
“Honestly, Gigi, I had already left last year … I told myself that I would only come back for Roma or Cagliari, and I prayed to God that I would not have to do it because it would have meant that they were going through difficult moments,” said Ranieri.
“I have been traveling around the world for over 35 years, but I don’t know about it. I want to see what else there is beyond football before dying.
“Big Ben said” stop “.”
Top oven oven
Lazio will also be tail for the derby after their impressive victory with the former pretender at the title Atalanta, who dismissed Marco Baroni’s team in the first photo.
The local rivals of Roma are one of the six teams, from third place to Atalanta to Fiorentina in eighth, separated by six points and with a pocket one against the other in the last weeks of the campaign.
Lazio has two points behind Bologna in shape which is fourth before their own force test with Atalanta, a team losing their way and may not even reach the Champions League.
Atalanta has lost its last three games without scoring a goal and forgot how to win at home, with their last domestic victory in Bergamo before Christmas, and risks being exceeded by Bologna and Juve placed in the fifth.
The Juve of Igor Tudor and Fiorentina both have the possibility of leaping because they accommodate the LECCE and the parma threatened by relegation respectively while their rivals are faced.
Meanwhile, Inter and Napoli continue their title battle with home matches against the modest Cagliari and Empoli, with three points the difference.
The Inter came to the weekend both at the top of their dramatic late victory in Bayern Munich, but also with a Wednesday eye in the second stage of their quarter-final with the Bundesliga giants.
Napoli has a much easier sequence than Inter without any Serie A commitment and seven games against teams in the lower half of the division.
Key statistics
6 – The number of teams contesting the last two places in the Champions League and the number of points separating them.
15 – The undefeated race of Roma in Serie A, which goes back just before Christmas.
Lights (times GMT)
Friday
Udinese V AC Milan
SATURDAY
Venezia against Monza (1300), Inter Milan V Cagliari (1600), Juventus C Lecce (1845)
Sunday
Atalanta V Bologna (1030), Fiorentina V Parma, Verona V Genoa (1300), Como against Torino (1600), Lazio V Roma (1845)
Monday
Napoli V Empoli (1845)
(This story has not been published by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from a unionized flow.)
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