Just finished my customary post-game walk following the game (always a more pleasant walk after a win, go figure), and what an important win this is because here's a quick look at our next four, potentially five games:
April 16: Bayern
April 20: @ Bologna
April 23: Milan
April 26-27: Roma
****April 29-30: @ Barcelona****
I mean, fuck me. I feel like we've already dealt with the whole "we have an insane fixture list coming up" discussion this season, so to a certain degree we should already be well mentally prepared for what's ahead. But my goodness, talk about a moment-of-truth schedule that awaits us between now and the end of the month. At first I was just thinking about our next three games, then I realized the Roma game is after the Coppa semifinal, and then I realized a trip to Barcelona awaits us after that if we're fortunate enough to get past Bayern.
This is such an equal parts exciting but terrifying part of the season to be at. We should really consider ourselves fortunate in many ways before anything else. It's mid-April, and with six games left in the domestic season we're in 1st place by at least three points (Forza Empoli!), we have a slim lead going into a home 2nd leg in the CL quarters, we're tied going into our home leg of the Coppa semis, and if we get to the CL semis we have second leg at home there as well. Everything is there to be won, but of course we could also end up losing everything as well between now and a month from now. Thus the terrifying component. It would feel devastating if such a long season was left with zero to show for our efforts.
The flip side to that is that Serie A is ours to win if we do our job and there's legit reason to believe in the Champions League as well. For a team that still has limitations in terms of depth, what these guys are accomplishing right now has been remarkable. Hopefully they can keep chipping away one game at a time and churning out the results they need, because the difficulty is about to get turned up yet another notch coming up here.