Next Saturday, 8th of November 2014, two historical Italian teams, Sampdoria and AC Milan, will measure forces at Stadio Luigi Ferraris for round 11 of the Serie A, for a match that the home side will surely want to win in order to maintain the third place of the table, right behind the title contenders, Juventus and AS Roma.

Last Sunday, Sampdoria clinched a precious home win over Fiorentina and jumped a few places on the Serie A table. La Samp displayed their usual combative style and, although their opponents offered some fierce resistance, they ended up by winning the match and in all fairness, one might add. Sinisa Mihajlovic’s boys showed great determination once again and proved that they have already recovered from the middle-of-the-week upset against Inter Milan at San Siro, where a Mauro Icardi’s goal from the penalty spot on the 90th minute of the match offered the home side a late and probably undeserved win.

Before last Sunday’s match, Sampdoria were on a three match row without a single win and the former Serbian international and current Samp’s boss, Sinisa Mihajlovic, knew how important a win would be for his team. A quality performance from the erratic Sergio Romero and a Maradona-like goal by the Brazilian forward Éder secured the win for the team, which is surely one of the most interesting clubs of the current edition of Serie A.

For the match against the former European champions of AC Milan, Mihajlovic will not be able to rely on the contribution of the team’s vice-captain, Angelo Palombo, due to suspension, but not even that should be enough to pinch Samp’s immense determination.

As for AC Milan, the Rossoneri are probably not enjoying the best of times and their last Sunday’s home defeat against Palermo serves to prove just that. After a promising start at Serie A this season, things started to deteriorate when AC Milan were defeated by Juventus at San Siro and, from that match onwards, they have only managed to win two of the seven matches they participated in.

Filippo Inzaghi, who took the helm of the Milanese team this season, still has plenty of hard work ahead of him in order to restore AC Milan to their past glory and probably a match against a team such as Sampdoria is not the best way to start winning once again.

Sampdoria are firm favourites for next Saturday’s match, not only because of the positive moment they are experiencing so far this season, but also because they remain undefeated when playing at Luigi Ferraris.

Sampdoria

Stats: W-2 L-1 D-2

Recent Form - WLDDW

AC Milan

Stats: W-2 L-1 D-2

Recent Form - LDDWW

Possible Line-ups

Sampdoria (4-3-1-2) - Romero - Cacciatore - Silvestre - Gastaldello - Mesbah - Obiang - Palombo - Soriano - Rizzo - Bergessio - Okaka

AC Milan (4-3-3) - Diego Lopez - Abate - Alex - Rami - De Sciglio - Andrea Poli - De Jong - Saponara - Keisuke Honda - Torres - Jeremy Menez.

Prediction

Sampdoria 1 AC Milan 0