Amici sportivi, Serie A restarts this weekend, and with it the traditional OTF prediction league.
Unlike anything else involving Italian football, the rules for our competition don't change every year. We will post five matches a week (no later than Friday morning, we hope, and trying to include "big" games and all major derbies) and ask you to submit 1X2 "Totocalcio style" (i.e., home win=1, draw=X, away win=2) predictions for each of them, along with score predictions for the two matches highlighted in bold.
Correct result predictions earn you one point; correct score predictions get (a total of) three points. The maximum score in any one week is therefore nine points, which has never been recorded in the history of the competition. We try to post each week's results and a current table no later than Tuesday.
Participants shouldn't worry about being seriously disadvantaged about missing a couple of weeks of picks, as nearly everyone (including us) manages to do so over the course of the season.
We will also again welcome some participants from another site so as to boost the numbers.
And here are this week's matches (starting times are in CET). To provide the maximum lead time, they are all taken from Sunday's calendar, which is being played in the evening:
Pescara - Inter (Sun 20h45)
Siena - Torino (Sun 20h45)
Roma - Catania (Sun 20h45)
Palermo - Napoli (Sun 20h45)
Atalanta - Lazio (Sun 20h45)
And just to get things started, my picks:
Pescara - Inter 2 (1-2)
Siena - Torino X
Roma - Catania 1
Palermo - Napoli x (1-1)
Atalanta - Lazio 1
