MILAN, 3 October 2005 — Two first-half goals from captain Paolo Maldini took AC Milan to a 2-1 victory over Reggina yesterday moving them up to second place, just two points behind leaders Juventus.
Champions Juventus are at home to challengers Inter Milan later in the biggest game of the Serie A season so far.
Fiorentina are level on 13 points with Milan after a 3-2 home victory against fellow Tuscans Livorno who scored both their goals in the final four minutes.
AS Roma suffered their second home defeat of the campaign with a 3-2 loss to 10-man Siena. To add to the pain of defeat all the goals from the visitors, including Francesco Colonnese’s 90th minute winner, came from former players of capital rivals Lazio.
Emiliano Bonazzoli scored twice for Sampdoria in their impressive 4-1 win away to Messina. Maldini, who last week set a record for Serie A appearances, had managed just 27 goals in 20 seasons and had never previously scored twice in a game.
Fiorentina were helped by the dismissal of Livorno’s main threat, captain Cristiano Lucarelli who was shown the red card for dissent. Goals from Luca Toni, Martin Jorgensen and Giampaolo Pazzini put Fiorentina 3-0 up but Livorno made a late bid for a point with goals from Fabio Galante and Stefano Morrone.
Arsenal Edge Birmingham,
Everton Lose
In London, deflected goal by substitute Robin van Persie gave Arsenal a much-needed 1-0 victory over 10-man Birmingham City in the Premier League yesterday.
Van Persie’s long-range effort on 81 minutes ended the brave resistance of Birmingham goalkeeper Maik Taylor, who saved a penalty and produced some wonderful stops to keep Arsenal at bay after City captain Kenny Cunningham was red-carded in the first half. The win lifted Arsenal’s points tally to 13, eight behind leaders Chelsea who play Liverpool at Anfield later.
Elsewhere, Everton remained rooted to the bottom after a 2-0 defeat at Manchester City and Wigan Athletic beat visiting Bolton Wanderers 2-1.
Arsene Wenger’s team dominated an incident-packed match at Highbury in which Birmingham lost captain Cunningham after 24 minutes for hacking down a goal-bound Freddie Ljungberg. Ljungberg almost immediately won a penalty but Robert Pires’ poor spotkick was saved by Taylor, who then produced a string of further stops to keep the scoresheet blank.
His best came in the 52nd minute when he turned a point-blank Ljungberg shot past the post and the Northern Ireland keeper almost matched that three minutes later when he tipped a Pires effort on to the woodwork.
