Serie A Sunday, Week One: Halftime Has Goals Everywhere Except Roma, Catania

It seems as though whichever of the midday Serie A matches that Fox Soccer elects to broadcast in the United States always ends up being the most boring of the simultaneous games. Of the six matches happening right now in Italy, four of them share nine goals. Catania - Siena remains scoreless, as does, of course, AS Roma - Cagliari, which is putting yours truly to sleep.

Chievo Verona 2-1 Novara

Chievo forward Sergio Pellissier did his damnedest to try and unseat Napoli's Ezequiel Lavezzi as the quickest goalscorer on Serie A opening weekend, but the best he could manage was a goal in the fifth minute. Cyril Théréau, who had assisted on the Pellissier goal, scored his own off a cross from Perparim Hetemaj. But newcomers Novara weren't ready to give up that easily, and answered minutes later with a goal from Francesco Marianini. And I thought this would be the dull match.

Fiorentina 1-0 Bologna

Viola fans, and quite probably coach Siniša Mihajlović, are surely relieved to be ahead at halftime, through a 20th minute header by Alberto Gilardino. A good omen for Fiorentina, who had such a miserable time of it last season?

Genoa 1-2 Atlanta

The home side were off to a good start when Miguel Veloso sent his shot into the net with just six minutes played. But then Maxi Moralez bagged a brace for new side Atalanta -- if the recently promoted La Dea manage to overcome their six-point deduction and stay up, the Argentine will be the reason.

Lecce 0-2 Udinese

Just in case anyone didn't believe that Udinese could score after the departure of Alexis Sanchez, the zebrette have already proved you wrong, with new addition Dusan Basta stealing the fastest goal of the weekend by scoring inside of two minutes. Then Antonio Di Natale started his campaign for his third successive goal-scoring title, by netting Udinese's second in the 16th.