Don’t call it fake news. If you ask the Sampdoria manager Marco Giampaolo, the idea that his team might compete for a Champions League spot this season is more like “science-fiction”. That was the term he used on Saturday night, after guiding his team to victory in the Derby della Lanterna.

Why would we moot such a possibility? A 2-0 win only kept them in sixth place – five points outside the top four. It was not a surprising result on its own terms; Genoa started and finished the day in the relegation zone. The 14-point gap between the two teams before kick-off was the widest it had ever been for the first derby of a season.

And yet this was a landmark result. It was Giampaolo’s third consecutive derby win over Genoa, for one thing – the longest such streak enjoyed by any manager at the club since the early 1950s. More than that, it brought Sampdoria’s points tally to 23 after 11 games: their best start to a Serie A campaign.

“From today,” ran one article in the Genoese newspaper Secolo XIX, “things will never be the same as they were before.” That might be stretching things a little, but you could forgive the hyperbole. Sampdoria’s previous best start came under Vujadin Boskov back in 1990-91. They finished that season by winning their one and only Scudetto.

Times have changed a little since then. Victories are worth three points nowadays, for a start (though the record holds even if you adjust past seasons to the current system), and competition at the top is fiercer than it has ever been. Boskov’s Samp were top of the table after 11 games. Giampaolo’s version have Napoli, Juventus, Inter, Lazio and Roma running ahead of them.

The goals do seem to come easier now, though. Sampdoria have 24 already – seven more than that title-winning side did at the corresponding stage – spread between nine different players. Gastón Ramírez became the latest to add his name to that list when he opened the scoring on Saturday night.

There was a furious energy to Genoa’s early play, the 21-year-old Stephane Omeonga imposing himself in midfield while Adel Taarabt sought to break the game open with some virtuoso act. He fired wide at the end of a dash through the Sampdoria midfield, then took out four defenders with a turn and scooped pass. The ball reached Gianluca Lapadula by the penalty spot, but he miscued his attempted scissor kick.

Sampdoria would not be so wasteful. When a long kick forward from goalkeeper Emiliano Viviano was headed on by Duván Zapata in the 24th minute, Ramírez was able to hold off the challenge from Ervin Zukanovic and flick the ball into the net.

Their second did not arrive until late in the second-half but, when it did, it came from a more familiar source. Fabio Quagliarella had struck six times already this season, and made it seven when he side-footed into an empty net after Zapata had drawn the keeper out.

There is always a temptation to focus in on goalscorers. Quagliarella’s late-career resurgence has been a joy to watch, all the more so now that we have an insight into the horrific stalking experience that he lived through (a subject covered in depth recently by a fascinating long-form piece over at Bleacher Report).

He has been the constant in Sampdoria’s rotating cast up front over the past 23 months, providing more than just goals. “I’ve given assists to everyone,” he told Secolo XIX in the buildup to the derby. “This year it’s [Dawid] Kownacki and Zapata. Last year it was [Patrik] Schick and [Luis] Muriel. The club sold them for €60m, they should have given me a percentage!”

Sampdoria’s two goalscorers in the Derby della Lanterna, Gastón Ramirez (left) and Fabio Quagliarella, celebrate their side’s 2-0 win over Genoa. Photograph: Simone Arveda/AP

Quagliarella was joking, of course. He is humble by nature, and would be the first to point out that he is thriving at Samp because the team are, not the other way around. The most essential element of their progress under Giampaolo might not be the attack at all, but a young midfield trio who have grown together into a formidable unit.

Lucas Torreira, Karol Linetty and Dennis Praet – 21, 22, and 23 years old respectively – each came to Samp in the summer of 2016. They cost a shade over €15m (£13m) combined, with Praet accounting for two-thirds of that figure. From an economic standpoint that already looks like tremendous business, with all three capable of commanding substantially higher transfer fees.

The real coup for Samp, though, is how well they work together. Torreira excels at reading the game and breaking up attacks, Praet is a former No10 who carries the ball forward with confidence and has an eye for the killer pass, while Linetty is an all-rounder who has scored three times in 10 appearances – half of those off the bench.

How far can they go? Giampaolo was sensible to play down expectations and avoid putting any extra pressure on a team built around such a youthful core, but is the Champions League truly an impossible target? Perhaps we will know better once Sampdoria have hosted Juventus after the international break. A victory over the champions might sound like another science-fiction scenario, but this is a team owned by a movie producer, after all.

Talking points

• A triumphant weekend for Sampdoria meant another traumatic one for Genoa, who fired manager Ivan Juric in the wake of the derby defeat. This was actually a spirited performance from a team with six points to its name, but results have not followed for some time. First hired by Genoa in the summer of 2016, then reappointed after briefly being axed in the winter, Juric had won just three of his last 28 games in charge. He is replaced by Davide Ballardini.



• For the second time this season, Napoli followed up a defeat to Manchester City in the Champions League with a goalless draw in Serie A. That scoreline seemed less troubling when the opposition were Inter than it did this weekend against Chievo. Napoli held 73.3% of possession but created few clear-cut chances, and there was an undeniable sluggishness – by their own high standards – to their attacking manoeuvres. A little tiredness is unsurprising in a team that, if you exclude international breaks, have played 18 games in 54 days (one every 72 hours) but does highlight the lack of depth in key positions, a situation exacerbated by the injuries to Arkadiusz Milik and now Faouzi Ghoulam. Maurizio Sarri confessed afterwards that he missed the latter player “even in training”.



• Napoli had kicked off knowing that a win would extend their lead at the top of Serie A, after Inter drew at home to Torino. If this was a disappointing result on paper for the Nerazzurri, they could content themselves with remaining unbeaten despite having trailed with little more than 10 minutes left to play. The enthusiasm of a 73,000-strong crowd for a ‘lunch match’ at San Siro was also quite something to behold, and indicative of the support building behind this team under Luciano Spalletti.



• Juventus, improbably, also had to come from a goal behind to win at home to Benevento – who led at the interval despite not having touched the ball once inside their opponent’s penalty area. It was a lovely free-kick from Amato Ciciretti which put the Witches in front, but the only surprise in the end was that it took Juve so long to get ahead in a wildly one-sided game. Benevento have now lost their first 12 games of the season – a feat matched only by Manchester United (back in 1930-31) across Europe’s top five leagues.



• Roma set a new Serie A record with their 12th consecutive away win. Most encouraging in their recent form has been the way that goals are being spread throughout the team. Gerson grabbed his first two for Roma at the weekend, and a team that once leaned too heavily on Edin Dzeko now do anything but. He has failed to score in six of Roma’s last seven matches across all competitions (which is not to say he isn’t contributing; he was excellent even beyond the assist he provided here), and only one of those – against Napoli – has ended in defeat.



Results: Atalanta 1-1 SPAL, Cagliari 2-1 Verona, Chievo 0-0 Napoli, Fiorentina 2-4 Roma, Internazionale 1-1 Torino, Juventus 2-1 Benevento, Sassuolo 0-2 Milan, Lazio P-P Udinese, Bologna 2-3 Crotone, Genoa 0-2 Sampdoria.