VERONA, Italy: Serie A’s leading scorer Mateo Retegui netted as Atalanta beat Parma 3-1 on Saturday to go top of Serie A on goal difference, overtaking Inter Milan despite the reigning champions’ rout of Verona.

Retegui claimed his 12th league goal of the campaign after just four minutes for the visitors before Ederson and Ademola Lookman scored to send Atalanta above Inter, who hammered Verona 5-0 earlier.

Napoli drop to third before they host Roma on Sunday on Claudio Ranieri’s return to top-flight management.

Juventus, meanwhile, failed to impress in a goalless stalemate with AC Milan and are sixth, one place above their opponents.

Atalanta coach Gian Piero Gasperini said his team were developing a winning mentality.

“We have to focus on winning every game we can and the rest is not really in our minds,” he told Sky Sport Italia.

“That was the case in the Europa League too, we didn’t start out thinking we’d win it, but as time wore on and we found ourselves in that position, we weren’t going to hold back either.”

Argentina-born Italy striker Retegui, 25, opened the scoring early on with a deft header.

The reigning Europa League champions doubled their lead after 39 minutes as Brazil midfielder Ederson scored his second goal of the season.

But five minutes into the second half, the hosts cut the deficit as Matteo Cancellieri fired home.

Retegui was replaced by attacking midfielder Charles De Ketelaere as Gasperini rested the attacker before Tuesday’s Champions League trip to Swiss side Young Boys.

Parma’s hopes of denying Atalanta a seventh straight league win were dashed with a quarter of an hour to play as Nigerian international Lookman finally scored, netting for a seventh time this campaign to ensure his side take top spot in the table.

Earlier, Marcus Thuram scored twice in Inter’s easy win over Verona as Joaquin Correa, Stefan de Vrij and Yann Bisseck were also on the scoresheet.

Correa’s opener in the 17th minute, a delightful dink after smart interplay with Thuram, didn’t just spark a rout, it was also the Argentine’s first Serie A goal in more than two years.

Out-of-favor Correa had only played 38 minutes this season before this weekend but was excellent in place of captain and star striker Lautaro Martinez who was sent home early on Saturday with the flu.

“I know him well, he’s been training brilliantly since July, he’s got a lot of competition,” Simone Inzaghi told DAZN.

“I’m pleased for him but I’m also pleased for the boys because they played really well,” he added.

Verona have lost nine of their 13 league matches this season and sit 14th, just three points above the relegation zone.

Inter now host Leipzig on Tuesday as they push for direct qualification for the last 16 of the Champions League, having thumped Verona with a clutch of starters either injured or rested.

As well as Martinez, Hakan Calhanoglu, Federico Dimarco and Benjamin Pavard missed Saturday’s match after a busy period on international duty.

Juventus trail Inter and Atalanta by three points after offering little to shout about against AC Milan at the San Siro.

Ravaged by injuries, including to starting center forward Dusan Vlahovic, coach Thiago Motta was forced into an experimental line-up featuring midfielder Teun Koopmeiners up front.

“I’m pleased with our performance, especially defensively against a team which created very little,” Motta told DAZN.

“All in all we played well, I think a point right now keeps us going. I’m happy to see that we’re well-organized and are capable of playing like a big team should.”

BAKU: The world approved a bitterly negotiated climate deal Sunday but poorer nations most at the mercy of worsening disasters dismissed a $300 billion a year pledge from wealthy historic polluters as insultingly low.
After two exhausting weeks of chaotic bargaining and sleepless nights, nearly 200 nations banged through the contentious finance pact in the early hours in a sports stadium in Azerbaijan.
But the applause had barely subsided when India delivered a full-throated rejection of the “abysmally poor” deal, kicking off a firestorm of criticism from across the developing world.
“It’s a paltry sum,” thundered India’s delegate Chandni Raina.
“This document is little more than an optical illusion. This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face.”
Sierra Leone’s climate minister Jiwoh Abdulai said it showed a “lack of goodwill” from rich countries to stand by the world’s poorest as they confront rising seas and harsher droughts.
Nigeria’s envoy Nkiruka Maduekwe put it more bluntly: “This is an insult.”
Some countries had accused Azerbaijan, an oil and gas exporter, of lacking the will to meet the moment in a year defined by costly disasters and on track to become the hottest on record.
But at protests throughout COP29, developed nations — major economies like the European Union, United States and Japan — were accused of negotiating in bad faith, making a fair deal impossible.
Developing nations arrived in the Caspian Sea city of Baku hoping to secure a massive financial boost from rich countries many times above their existing pledge of $100 billion a year.
Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, said she would return home with only “small portion” of what she fought for, but not empty-handed.
“It isn’t nearly enough, but it’s a start,” said Stege, whose atoll nation homeland faces an existential threat from creeping sea levels.
Nations had struggled at COP29 to reconcile long-standing divisions over how much developed nations most accountable for historic climate change should provide to poorer countries least responsible but most impacted by Earth’s rapid warming.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell acknowledged the final deal was imperfect and said “no country got everything they wanted.”
“This is no time for victory laps,” he said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he had “hoped for a more ambitious outcome” and appealed to governments to see it as a starting point.
Developed countries only put the $300 billion figure on the table on Saturday after COP29 went into extra time and diplomats worked through the night to improve an earlier spurned offer.
Bleary-eyed diplomats, huddled anxiously in groups, were still polishing the final phrasing on the plenary floor in the dying hours before the deal passed.
UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband hailed “a critical eleventh hour deal at the eleventh hour for the climate.”
At points, the talks appeared on the brink of collapse.
Delegates stormed out of meetings, fired shots across the bow, and threatened to walk away from the negotiating table should rich nations not cough up more cash.
In the end — despite repeating that “no deal is better than a bad deal” — developing nations did not stand in the way of an agreement.
US President Joe Biden cast the agreement reached in Baku as a “historic outcome.”
EU climate envoy Wopke Hoekstra said it would be remembered as “the start of a new era for climate finance.”
The agreement commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries green their economies, cut emissions and prepare for worse disasters.
It falls short of the $390 billion that economists commissioned by the United Nations had deemed a fair share contribution by developed nations.
“This COP has been a disaster for the developing world,” said Mohamed Adow, the Kenyan director of Power Shift Africa, a think tank.
“It’s a betrayal of both people and planet, by wealthy countries who claim to take climate change seriously.”
The United States and EU pushed to have newly wealthy emerging economies like China — the world’s largest emitter — chip in.
Wealthy nations said it was politically unrealistic to expect more in direct government funding at a time of geopolitical uncertainty and economic belt-tightening.
Donald Trump, a skeptic of both climate change and foreign assistance, was elected just days before COP29 began and his victory cast a pall over the UN talks.
Other countries, particularly in the EU — the largest contributor of climate finance — saw right-wing backlashes against the green agenda, not fertile conditions for raising big sums of public money.
The final deal “encourages” developing countries to make contributions on a voluntary basis, reflecting no change for China, which already provides climate finance on its own terms.
The deal also posits a larger overall target of $1.3 trillion per year to cope with rising temperatures and disasters, but most would come from private sources.