There were 33,196 people at the Barbera on Monday night: 16,196 match tickets and 17,000 season tickets. More than one season-ticket holder for every two in the ground, in Serie B, on a Monday, for a game that kicks off at 8.30pm and ends with the curva singing that the leaders are pulling away.
Inzaghi said it hadn't happened since 2018, that it had been more than 3,000 days. It's true, and then some: 3,000 days before Monday is 21 June 2018: high summer, no football, nobody top of anything. The last real time is further back still.
Enjoy it. Then let's sit down a moment, because this match has a definite shape and it's worth looking at.
The game Palermo chose to play
Palermo didn't go and hunt Sampdoria down in their own half. They stayed in a mid-block, let the visitors have the ball and waited, stepping up in bursts now and then without ever turning it into a siege.
There's a logic to it, and you see it by looking at what was in front of them. Sampdoria attack with Tutino coming short to hold it up and Sinani and Insigne running into the space beyond: it's a front three that lives on an open pitch. Pressing them high means exposing yourself to the vertical pass that beats your line and leaves your defence stranded against three men running. Inzaghi didn't hand them that gift.
So Sampdoria had the ball, and with the ball they stretched. They pushed their centre-backs up, pushed their midfielders up, emptied their own half, which for a team used to staying short and compact is an uncomfortable suit. You could see it wasn't their trade.
Inside all that, Palermo did the simplest thing going: win it back and go straight out down the flanks, either with the long ball or by leaning on Pohjanpalo, who came short to lay it off for the runners.
It finishes 1.82 expected goals to 1.25. Not a chasm, and we'll come back to it. But the three goals weren't accidents: all three were born down the same side of the pitch.
The first goal is the manual
90% of what this team works on all week is inside that goal on 9 minutes.
Palermo attack down the left: 44% of their play on that side, against 22% through the middle. Johnsen tucks inside and drags Di Pardo with him. Into the channel that opens comes Augello on a deep overlap, and if Sampdoria's winger doesn't track all the way back, that's two against one.
Augello gets to the byline and crosses. The natural target is Pohjanpalo, attacking the near post and taking his marker away with him. He can't reach it. But behind him, from the far side, in comes Strefezza, who started wide right and arrives in the box from the side nobody was watching. First time, in.
Overload on the left, striker clearing the space, a late run from the weak side. When a team scores the goal it trains, the coach has done his job.
And the same move tells you Sampdoria's problem: on crosses into their box they had no reference points. Picking up the forwards' runs and the midfielders' late arrivals at the same time takes players who know who to mark, and on Monday those players weren't there.
The second, and the centimetres that were missing
On 33 minutes Augello collects the ball for a throw-in level with the box and launches it like a corner, half the team inside. Di Pardo gets a touch, Pohjanpalo turns in a metre of space and beats Vindahl.
It's no accident it ended that way. Sampdoria turned up without Ravanelli and without Viti, that is, without their two genuinely aerial defenders, fielding Gartenmann and Delli Carri. The centimetres in the box were ours, and Inzaghi knew it before kick-off.
And it's the third time in 3 matchdays. 7 league goals, 6 different scorers, and 3 of those 7 come from a throw-in taken into the box: 2 at Arezzo, now this one. Nobody in this Serie B drills them like that.
It's a real weapon, and it wins points. It's also something to keep an eye on, because 3 out of 7 is a lot, and nobody has ever won a league without being able to hurt teams in open play too.
That the man taking it is Augello, who played for Sampdoria, is one of those things the numbers don't record and the Barbera does.
Then Corradi moved a piece
There were no fools on the other side.
All through the first half Sampdoria pushed up man-to-man on our back four, with their holding midfielder closing the inside passing lane. When Hernani lined up alongside Pohjanpalo our 4-2-3-1 became a 4-4-2 with nobody between the lines, and the ball wasn't going inside.
Then Corradi pushed a central midfielder up next to Tutino.
It sounds like a small adjustment, and instead it turns the game around. With two pure holding midfielders in front of the defence, Palermo suddenly had an extra man to chase exactly where they couldn't afford it. They started running after the game, and a gap opened between defence and midfield that hadn't been there before. Tutino began turning inside it, and Bani and Ceccaroni had an uncomfortable half hour.
On 63 minutes the bill arrived: a Tutino-Verschaeren combination, the Belgian hits the bar, Insigne is quickest to the rebound and puts it into an empty net.
Verschaeren is the midfielder who had been pushed up. The goal we conceded is exactly the goal Corradi had been building for an hour. That goal isn't bad luck. It's a defensive line still learning to move together.
The half hour that says something new
This is where the game could have died, and in the last two seasons it would have.
At 2-0 Palermo had already dropped deep and got frantic, and Inzaghi admitted it first. At Arezzo, after it went 2-2, the team ended up camped in its own box. Not on Monday: after conceding they took the ball back and went looking for a third.
On 83 minutes Gabrielloni comes on for Pohjanpalo, and it's a deliberate call: a physical centre-forward to throw in when the opposition is tired and stretched. Four minutes later he's already meeting a corner with his head, and Vindahl has to make a great save.
Then, on 94, the third. A placed left foot from Palumbo on the edge of the box, set up by Johnsen.
And guess which side the move starts from. The left, again: the whole evening went through there.
What still isn't right
That said, it isn't all fine.
The full-backs get left alone. When Augello pushes up, and Augello always pushes up, there's nobody behind him. Sampdoria knew it and tried it all night: win the ball, immediate vertical pass into that channel, Sinani in behind or Di Pardo overlapping. It went well on Monday because sitting deep meant fewer chances to do it, but the hole isn't closed, only hidden, and on an open pitch it comes back.
Pierozzi struggled, and it should be said that he had Lorenzo Insigne in front of him, which in this division is a luxury. Even so, it's the second game running in which that side needs watching. Cassandro came on and brought the legs it needed.
Then there's Pohjanpalo, who only gets the ball in the box from a dead ball. He scored, and it's his first league goal after the 3 in the cup. But in open play we keep using him 30 metres further back, holding it up, and then ask him to get back in to attack the cross. You could see him labouring. A box striker belongs in the box.
The honest bottom line
Sampdoria produced 1.25 expected goals, hit the bar and had two or three situations to get back into it. On another night that game finishes 2-2. When Corradi says the result is a lie he isn't making excuses: he's watching the same match from a different chair, and he isn't entirely wrong.
We scored 3 goals from 1.82, and it's the second matchday running in which we collect more than we produce. Sooner or later the account settles.
But 3 wins from 3, 7 goals, 6 different scorers and 5 straight victories counting the cup don't happen by accident. Behind, on 7 points, are Mantova, Südtirol and Ascoli; Sampdoria are still on 1, with 6 goals conceded in 3 games.
There's the sour note of the evening, and it's the only thing that genuinely worries: Strefezza off on 21 minutes with a muscle problem right after scoring, and Hernani replaced at half-time.
A lot of what happens on Sunday rides on Hernani. Because Monday's plan rested partly on him: a box-to-box midfielder covering behind the two holders and stopping the opposition midfielders from finding the free man. Without him, that mechanism loses a piece.
On Sunday at 3pm it's the Partenio, against Nesta's Avellino. That's where we find out whether on Monday we watched a team that can change its skin, or a night that came off for a coach on a good run.
In the meantime we're top for the first time in 3,000 days, and on Monday night at the Barbera I was on my feet too.
T.L.
Want to see how much each team really deserves its league position? The Meritometro compares real points with expected points. For those who want the models rather than the headlines, there's the Nerd Zone.