Sampdoria's Lucas Torreira, top, celebrates with his teammate Gaston Ramirez after scoring during Serie A soccer match between Sampdoria and Juventus at the Luigi Ferraris Stadium at Genoa in Italy on Sunday. — AP MILAN, Nov 20 (AP): This season's Serie A title race is shaping up to be the most interesting in years and it took another turn on Sunday when Juventus fell to a surprise 3-2 defeat at Sampdoria.
Inter Milan beat Atalanta 2-0 in the evening match to go second, two points ahead of six-time defending champion Juventus. Napoli, which beat AC Milan 2-1 Saturday, is top with 35 points to Inter's 33. Fourth-place Roma has 30 points with a game in hand. Duvan Zapata, Lucas Torreira and Gian Marco Ferrari put Sampdoria 3-0 up in the second half before Juventus threatened an astonishing stoppage-time comeback with a penalty from Gonzalo Higuain and a strike from Paulo Dybala.
It will be a blow to Juve's confidence ahead of Wednesday's Champions League match against Barcelona.
Juventus was without defender Andrea Barzagli and goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon, who were recovering from the disappointment of Italy's failure to qualify for the World Cup and Sampdoria made the most of their absences to expose the Bianconeri defensively. Samp broke the deadlock six minutes into the second half when a poor clearance by Federico Bernardeschi on Fabio Quagliarella's cross fell straight to Zapata, who sent a looping header past Wojciech Szczesny. Juventus upped the pressure but was stifled by a solid Sampdoria side, which doubled its lead in the 71st with a fine strike from Torreira from just outside the area into the bottom left corner.
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