By Chris Wright
Napoli sashayed past Atalanta and into the quarter-finals of the Coppa Italia with a 3-1 victory on Wednesday evening, though Lorenzo Insigne’s 72nd minute goal (which saw Napoli go 2-1 up) didn’t pass without causing a smidgen of controversy.
After a fairly listless throughball was dinked over the top of the defence toward the clearly offside Gonzalo Higuain, Atalanta centre-half Cristiano Del Grosso decided to turn his back on play and appeal rather than attempt to clear the situation up first and let the officials do their job.
The rest, as they say, was a little bit farcical…
Of course, the jilted Atalanta players, including Del Grosso (probably to mask his embarrassment more than anything), protested in unison; crowding the linesman and mithering over his decision not to raise his flag.
Alas, however, the official was perfectly correct in not doing so, with Higuain not technically interfering with play as the ball never actually reached him.
Oopsy daisy.
By the way, Jose Callejon’s opener was a bit of alright too…