MILAN, Italy: Inter Milan extended their lead at the top of Serie A to eight points with Sunday’s 2-0 win at Cremonese, a match which was marred by away fans nearly hitting the hosts’ goalkeeper Emil Audero with a firecracker.
Lautaro Martinez and Piotr Zielinski’s first-half strikes were enough for Inter to extend their unbeaten league run to 11 matches and pile pressure on nearest challengers AC Milan who face Bologna on Tuesday.
Inter again comfortably dealt with one of the division’s lesser lights, their consistency against the lower-ranked teams. Cristian Chivu’s team have collected 31 points from those 11 fixtures.
“It’s not a message to the rest of the league, it’s a message to ourselves,” said Martinez.
“There’s still along way to go and it’s a very evenly-balanced division.”
Martinez’s header, which came in the 16th minute from Federico Dimarco’s corner, made him Inter’s joint fourth-highest goalscorer in Serie A — level on 128 with Alessandro Altobelli who won the World Cup with Italy in 1982.
Martinez celebrated both his goal and his daughter’s fifth birthday, but a positive evening for him and Inter almost took a darker turn when Audero fell to the turf following the arrival of the firecracker from the Inter fans massed behind his goal.
The match was stopped for a few minutes and for a moment it appeared Audero, who played four times for Inter during the 2023/24 season, had been directly struck by the explosive, which went off near him in the penalty area.
Fortunately a stunned Audero had only suffered minor injuries to his leg and was able to continue, and the match finished without further incident.
“It’s something you have to condemn... it’s a very dangerous thing that you cannot do,” said Inter defender Alessandro Bastoni, who was born in Cremona and whose father played at full-back for Cremonese.
“I can only express solidarity with Emil who was a teammate of ours. Let’s hope they don’t happen any more.”
Cremonese started the season well but nine matches without a win has left them in 16th, five points above the relegation zone with fixtures against Atalanta, Roma and Milan coming up in the next few weeks.

Juve up to fourth

Gleison Bremer helped Juventus up to fourth, the Brazilian international defender scoring twice in a comfortable 4-1 win at Parma as the Turin giants continued their revival under Luciano Spalletti.
Bremer put Juve ahead in the 15th minute and poked home the away team’s third from close range eight minutes after the break, shortly after Andrea Cambiaso put Parma back in the game by flicking an innocuous cross into his own goal.
The 28-year-old has had to battle back from two serious knee injuries but looks back to his best for Juve’s push to for Champions League qualification.
Weston McKennie and Jonathan David scored the other goals as Juve, who look like a totally different team to the one coached by Spalletti’s predecessor Igor Tudor, went two points above Roma who take on Udinese on Monday night.
Como are sixth on 41 points, four behind Juve after Nico Paz wasted a last-gasp penalty in a goalless draw with Atalanta, who sit seventh and are set to sell one-time star winger Ademola Lookman to Atletico Madrid.
Como would have moved above Roma on goal difference had rising star Nico Paz netted from the spot in the eighth minute of added time after Giorgio Scalvini’s handball.
But Marco Carnesecchi pulled off a brilliant save to deny Paz and earn 10-man Atalanta, who had Honest Ahanor sent off in the eighth minute, a hard-earned point.
The 21-year-old Paz has scored eight times and set up six more this Serie A season as Como, owned by tobacco giant Djarum and coached by Cesc Fabregas, have exceeded expectations in just their second top-flight season in a quarter of a century.