After collecting a point from their opening 18 matches, have Benevento turned their luck around courtesy of the resurgence of a journeyman striker?

Sampdoria were seeing witches on Saturday. So was everyone else in Italy, to be fair. This was the weekend when La Befana made her annual visit, dropping off gifts for good children and lumps of coal for the naughty. Whether this kindly old lady, riding a broomstick that she uses to sweep each house before she leaves, should technically be considered a witch is the subject of scholarly debate but she is widely depicted as one.

It is not La Befana, though, who appears on Benevento’s crest. Their witch is a manifestation of the city’s pagan traditions, dating back to the 17th century. As Samp would discover at the Stadio Ciro Vigorito, this place has a little magic left yet.

Benevento’s hopes of surviving their first season of top-flight football appeared nonexistent after they collected a point from their opening 18 games. A 1-0 win over Chievo in their final fixture of 2017 brought raucous celebration but few would have tipped this team to follow up with a further victory over opponents who were sitting in sixth place.

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What else but witchcraft could explain the performance of Massimo Coda? The Benevento forward is a hard-grafting journeyman, 29 years old and playing only his second season of Serie A football. The previous one yielded two goals in 18 appearances for Parma in 2014-15.

Coda has played for 13 teams in 14 years, and looked set to add another to that list this January. He had failed to score in 12 top-flight games for Benevento and was expecting to be sold when the transfer window opened. But he broke his duck with the winner against Chievo and then followed that by obliterating Sampdoria.

It was not only the fact that he equalised after Gianluca Caprari gave the visitors a first-half lead but the manner in which he did it. Chasing a ball into a blind alley down the right, he cut back inside and bamboozled the centre-back Gianmarco Ferrari with a stepover worthy of a sportswear commercial before curling a shot into the top corner.

His second should perhaps have been saved, a free-kick that dipped sharply over the wall, but flew close enough to Emiliano Viviano for the keeper to get a hand on the ball. Coda was due a break, though, after hitting the woodwork twice when his team was trailing.

Crucially, he did not settle for that. Benevento have suffered a series of injury-time indignities this season – infamously on their visit to Cagliari, where they equalised in the 94th minute, only to concede again in the 95th – so even with moments left to play a 2-1 lead still felt precarious. Coda ensured the three points by teeing up team-mate Enrico Brignola for a simple finish as the game moved into added time.

Good thing, too. Benevento maintained a trend by conceding at the death yet again. For once, it did not matter, as the game finished 3-2 to the hosts.

Can they truly avoid relegation after such a hapless start? Crotone’s great escape last season offers grounds for encouragement. The Calabrians were nine points from safety after 20 games. For Benevento, that gap is down to a meagre eight.

The prospect is certainly bewitching but this result also had implications at the other end of the table – sixth-placed Sampdoria’s defeat allowed Atalanta to pull level with them on 30 points. It was the culmination of an extraordinary week for the Bergamese club, who beat Napoli away on Tuesday night to reach the Coppa Italia semi-final, then followed that with a win by the same 2-1 scoreline over Roma at the Stadio Olimpico.

You could say they have been fortunate with their timing. Napoli fielded a heavily rotated team, an understandable decision for a side pursuing greater prizes on modest resources. And Roma deprived themselves of Radja Nainggolan, the midfielder omitted from their match-day squad as punishment for a boozy Instagram post on New Year’s Eve.

His absence was undoubtedly felt but that should not take away from the manner in which Atalanta took the game to their hosts, scoring twice inside 20 minutes. Andreas Cornelius punished Federico Fazio’s loose tracking with a precision finish, before Papu Gómez, this week sporting a Peppa Pig armband, teed up Marten de Roon for the second.

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The latter player would collect a harsh red card before the interval but even with 10 men Atalanta continued to hold their own. None should be blind to Gian Piero Gasperini’s tactical savvy by now but once again the manager got the big calls spot on, starting Cornelius ahead of Andrea Petagna and prioritising his team’s width by restoring the fresh legs of Leonardo Spinazzola and Hans Hateboer at the wing-back positions after both were rested against Napoli.

He has kept this team punching above their weight despite losing key players in the summer, and fielding strong teams, and winning with them, in both the domestic cup and the Europa League. You would not need to check La Befana’s notes from the past 12 months to know that he has been very good indeed.

Talking points

• As Roma struggled, Lazio moved up to third with a 5-2 win over Spal. Ciro Immobile hit four, becoming the first player across Europe’s top five leagues to reach 20 goals this season. But if he has the numbers, then it’s still Luis Alberto who brings the style.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lazio’s Ciro Immobile scores his fourth goal against Spal. Photograph: Elisabetta Baracchi/EPA

• An unconvincing win for Juventus, with Cagliari raging over a penalty not awarded to them late on. Although the ball clearly struck Federico Bernardeschi’s arm inside the area, the referee Gianpaolo Calvarese judged it involuntary. The Cagliari president, Tommaso Giulini, was furious over the failure to overturn the decision using VAR, but it had been applied correctly. The replay official was in contact with Calvarese, but the latter made plain that he had seen the incident clearly and believed the action to be involuntary. Subjective assessments cannot be overturned by replay, only objective ones.

• Welcome back, Walter Mazzarri, whose tenure at Torino began with a 3-0 rout of Bologna. The manager installed M’Baye Niang at the centre of a three-man attack and was rewarded with a goal from his former Watford charge. The player himself, though, dedicated his strike to the man Mazzarri replaced, Sinisa Mihajlovic. “He signed me to get him results, and I didn’t manage it,” said Niang. “If he was fired, then that’s my fault, too.”

• Yet another draw for Inter, with Luciano Spalletti giving an exasperated response to questions about their squad depth and need to invest in January: “Even my mum, who is 80 years old, sitting at home, knows that I need another centre-back.?”

• The final word this week goes to Federico Chiesa, asked as a toddler who would replace the goals scored by the departing Gabriel Batistuta at Fiorentina. He first suggests Francesco Toldo, only for his father, Enrico, to remind him that Toldo is a keeper. Upon further consideration, Federico nominates himself. Detto fatto. At 20 years old, he trails only Giovanni Simeone (who grabbed the equaliser this weekend) in the Viola’s scoring charts.

