Salvation? It can be done. Difficult, but not impossible. The chase starts from Como

by Simone CioniEMPOLIInever was a stop so precious for theEmpoli, with the Italian medical staff who in these two weeks will try to recover as many players as possible so as to allow Roberto D'Aversa to have more arrows in your quiver to try to complete the task necessary to conquer the salvation. The one that is in front of the Azzurri in the last nine days, that many will be missing until the resumption of the Serie A Saturday 29th March, it is a particularly steep climb but not impossible to climb. First of all because D'Aversa's team has shown that it has all it takes to save itself and then because history also tells us that a comeback it's possible. Since Serie A returned to 20 teams, in the 2004-'05 season, five teams have celebrated remaining in the category at the end of the championship after being among the last three teams with 22 or fewer points on matchday 2013. The first to do so was Sassuolo in the 14-'21 tournament. With nine games to go, the Neroverdi from Emilia were second to last on 3 points with 13 points to recover, but thanks to the XNUMX points earned in the following two months they climbed up to seventeenth place, leaving Bologna behind.

How can we forget the sensational comeback of Nicola's Crotone, who in 2016-'17, after having won just 14 points in the first 29 matchdays, brought home 20 in the remaining 9, going from the second-to-last to the fourth-to-last place, at the expense of Empoli. A crazy average of 2,22 points per game, which was not necessary for example for Cagliari in the 2020-'21 championship. On that occasion, in fact, the Sardinians who on the twenty-ninth matchday had the same 22 points as Empoli today with the same gap from safety, needed only 15 points (1,66 per game) to stay in Serie A. Even in the 2021-'22 season and in the following one, Salernitana and Verona only had to get 9 points in the last 9 matchdays to save themselves at 31 (for the latter, however, the success in the play-off with Spezia was decisive). Even in these two cases, at the same point in the championship as now, the two teams were respectively 3 and 4 points behind the second-last placed team.

A chase, the blue one, that will have to start from Como, to then materialize in a month of April that could be fundamental: beating Cagliari and Venice at home and maybe finding at least one point between Naples and Florence, would actually bring the blues to more than half the work (the important thing is that the points arrive, where and with whom it makes no difference). The best viaticum to then face the last four challenges with renewed hopes.