Pasquale Mazzocchi’s sensational curler gave Salernitana all three points and Spezia continued their astoundingly poor away record.
There was only one point separating these teams going into the Stadio Arechi. Giulio Maggiore was out of action and Franck Ribery said goodbye to the fans after announcing his retirement this week amid emotional scenes, while Spezia missed Simone Bastoni and Viktor Kovalenko.
The visitors started very aggressively, Kevin Agudelo stinging Luigi Sepe’s gloves from the edge of the area, while Norbert Gyomber prodded over the bar from a corner and Emil Holm grazed a coat of paint off the upright.
Emil Holm and Antonio Candreva hit the side-netting, but the deadlock was broken with a sensational piece of skill at the dawn of the second half.
Candreva’s cross from the right was only cleared to the edge of the area, where Pasquale Mazzocchi took a touch and curled a magnificent right-foot finish into the far top corner, giving Bartlomiej Dragowski no chance. He ran to the touchline to hug Ribery, who is now a member of Davide Nicola’s coaching staff.
M’Bala Nzola drilled inches wide of the far post from outside the box, but Norbert Gyomber almost scored a stunner when his rocket from distance clipped the top of the crossbar.
Nzola should’ve scored from six yards in the final minutes, but ballooned over after Strelec pulled back from the by-line, under pressure from Gyomber.
There were 10 minutes of stoppages awarded, mainly due to a communication system malfunction that required a while to fix.
Salernitana had three chances to secure the points in the space of 60 seconds, as first Dragowski rushed off his line and stuck out a foot to parry from Krzysztof Piatek one-on-one, then he made two saves in the same move from the resulting corner on Piatek’s header and the Flavius Daniliuc follow-up.
It is the sixth away defeat of the season for Spezia, all without scoring a single goal.
Salernitana 1-0 Spezia
Mazzocchi 48 (Sa)