Spezia continue to keep on the coattails of Pippo Inzaghi’s Pisa near the top of the Serie B table.

The Ligurian side have hit something of a stutter-step in the last two rounds. Consecutive draws to Palermo and Modena have slowed down their automatic promotion charge just a little.

Yet there is still enough of a gap between them and fourth-placed Cremonese that Luca D’Angelo’s men can afford a slip up every now and then.

The gap remains at nine points going into the weekend’s fixtures, and Spezia host a Catanzaro side in great form in what is sure to be the best pound-for-pound game of the round.

As usual, Francesco Pio Esposito was on the scoresheet for the Bianchi against Modena. Esposito scored in the 23rd minute at the Stadio Alberto Braglia, sweeping the ball home after good work from Arkadiusz Reca down the left-hand side.

Esposito showed all the hallmarks of a true centre forward in moving into the correct space at the correct time, to score. It was the striker’s 13th goal of the Serie B season, and takes him joint-top of the Pablito, named so in honour of Italian great Paolo Rossi.

The other players level on the same tally of goals are Sassuolo’s Armand Lauriente and Catanzaro captain Pietro Iemmello. 

And this is essentially what Spezia against Catanzaro will come down to – a battle between two of the league’s best strikers.

Iemmello also scored last weekend, in the slender 1-0 win over Cittadella thanks to some comical defending from the away side. 

Cittadella goalkeeper and defender Emmanuele Matino collided en route to attempting to win the ball on the edge of their own box. Iemello, showing classic predatory instincts, followed the ball and, after the pair clashed into one another, leaving both sprawled on the floor, the 32-year-old had the easy job of rolling the ball into the net.

The captain is crucial for Fabio Caserta, with the hometown boy scoring nearly 40 per cent of Catanzaro’s goals this season.

While the game is third against fifth, it’s really a battle between the two hitmen, two of the stars of this Serie B season.

Yet the somewhat bigger news this week is that Spezia are just the latest Italian side to have new owners.

American owner Robert Platek, who’d owned the club since 2021, sold his shares to FC32 Global Holdings Inc, a company founded by Australian Paul Francis.

In a press conference this week, Francis said all the right things — as new owners tend to do.

Francis has ambitions of making Spezia a ‘permanent’ fixture in Serie A within the next five years, but first of all there’s the small matter of the next 12 league games and gaining promotion back to the big time.

Spezia’s previous Serie A stint amounted to three seasons before suffering relegation at the end of the 2022-23 campaign. 

If they are to secure promotion this season, they’ll need Esposito to continue firing in the goals. He hasn’t done too badly so far.

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