Serie A wrap up: Atalanta defeats Sampdoria to go third

Luis Muriel of Atalanta BC celebrates with team-mates after scoring the his goal during the Serie A match between Atalanta BC and UC Sampdoria at Gewiss Stadium on July 8, 2020 in Bergamo, Italy.

Atalanta continued their remarkable season by beating Sampdoria 2-0 to extend their winning run to nine Serie A games and climb to third in the table, although they left it late against stubborn opponents.

Serie A's leading scorers struggled to break down relegation-threatened Sampdoria until Ruslan Malinovskyi's in swinging corner found Rafael Toloi at the far post and the Brazilian out jumped two defenders to head home in the 75th minute.

Substitute Luis Muriel fired the second 10 minutes later, his ninth goal of the season scored from the bench, although the Colombian did not celebrate against his former club.

Sampdoria ,amager Claudio Ranieri had been sent off just before the first goal, the referee losing patience with him after persistent dissent.

Atlanta have 66 points from 31 games, two ahead of Inter Milan who visit Verona on Thursday and only two behind second-placed Lazio. 

A second-half goal from Hirving 'Chucky' Lozano gave Napoli a 2-1 win at struggling Genoa after they had earlier become the latest victims of the controversial new handball rule.

Fifth-placed Napoli thought they had gone ahead in the sixth minute when Eljif Elmas scored from close range after Genoa had repeatedly failed to clear a corner.

Yet, as Genoa were waiting to restart the game, the referee decided to review the incident on the pitchside monitor and finally disallowed the goal more than three minutes after the ball had entered the net. Replays showed that ball had hit Napoli defender Kostas Manolas's fingertips before rebounding to Elmas although it did not appear to affect the flight of the ball.

Napoli went ahead in first-half stoppage time as Dries Mertens finished off a neat move by curling a low shot past Mattia Perin.

Genoa, who stayed in the relegation zone, levelled four minutes after halftime with the simplest of goals as Edoardo Goldaniga scored with a free header at the near post from a corner.

Napoli won it in the 66th minute when Fabian Ruiz launched a long ball over the Genoa defence to find Lozano and the Mexican timed his run perfectly and kept his cool to fire past Perin. 

Fiorentina and Cagliari served up one of the dullest games since the Serie A season restarted when they played out a dour 0-0 draw.

Giovanni Simeone had an early goal disallowed for the Sardinians for offside while Fiorentina's Alfred Duncan hit the post just before halftime.

Fiorentina forward Federico Chiesa was completely out-of-sorts, getting booked early on and at one point colliding with Pol Lirola as they both went for the same ball before being substituted at halftime.

Roma battled back from the early setback of conceding a penalty to edge out Parma 2-1.

A clumsy challenge from Bryan Cristante on Andreas Cornelius was picked up by VAR and allowed Juraj Kucka to score from the penalty spot early on.

However goals either side of half-time from Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Jordan Veretout proved to be enough for Roma, who survived what looked like a very decent penalty shout on 74 minutes.

Sassuolo continued their fine post lockdown form and climbed up to eighth place with an impressive 2-1 derby victory away to Bologna.

Domenico Berardi opened the scoring for the visitors with a fine solo effort before Lukas Haraslin bundled the ball home from close range to double Sassulo's lead.

Musa Barrow pulled back an injury time goal for Bologna but it wasn't enough.

In the day's other game, Torino produced a fine second-half comeback with three goals after the break to see off Brescia as the won 3-1.

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