The Italian Football Thread

Beautiful goal wasn't it. Bologna won again at Napoli last night in the Coppa, dire few days for Napoli.

At the other end of the scale there was this OG from our defending dream team of Ciani and Cana

That's some goal...

Fiorentina up to third

Good win for Fiorentina today yeah. Poor do for Inter, drawing at home to Genoa. They aren't playing half as well as they were when they beat Milan, Juve a couple of months back, they've been very poor lately.

Roma-Milan tonight, looking forward to it.

What style of football has their new manager, Stramaccioni, employed?

^ Not sure. But nothing like Zeman's - 3-0 up v Milan at half time, we're magical to watch. Ozzy's header, DDR's pass to Lamela, Lamela's finish, everything is just beautiful. I'm very confident we won't throw it away either

More often that not their reliant on counter attacks and the front two/three to create the chances themselves. The back three needs Samuel to keep it working, without him the other two seem a bit lost. The midfield works hard, closes down space etc but there's little creativity in there so overall their not very impressive but they do seem able to raise their game as the Milan and Juve results show. Aside from a 10 minute spell we were the better side when we played them the other week.

KP Boateng leading Milan off the pitch. Shame on you Pro Patria!

Fair play to him.

Well done to him for walking off, and the rest of them following suit. I hope others will do the same if it happens to them.

Very sad to see though.

Not surprising though, that kind of abuse is pretty common in the Italian lower leagues. Even sadder was the Pro Patria chairman trying to say they weren't fans of the club and he'd never seen them in the ground before.

Even worse was the Mayor saying the Milan players stopping the game, was worse than the fans racially abusing Boateng et al.

He's Lega Nord, what do you expect? Another one of those guys talked about how excited he was for Verona's "first game in Africa" when they went to Palermo for a Coppa game last year.

Is there anybody sane in Italian politics?

No.

I'd wager there'd have to be one or two sane people involved in at least one of the four bazillion parties they have.

Fair play to Boateng

Boateng kicked the ball at a section of the 'supporters' before leading Milan off the pitch.

Good job RVP wasn't in the crowd, he coulda been killed.


In all seriousness though, I'm inclined to agree with Seedorf on this one, walking off the pitch gives the racists some kind of empowerment.

But then, it's hard to expect a player to play through the abuse, so I wouldn't say I condemn them for walking off.

Apparently Fiorentina have signed Giuseppe Rossi.

€16m I think. Given his injuries it's questionable if he'll be able to get back to his best and it'll probably be this time next year before he's really firing on all cylinders, but it's probably a risk worth taking, especially if this sort of ambitious signing helps persuade Jovetic to hang around for another couple of years.

I saw it reported as €9.5/10m + addons.

Villarreal fucked up the whole Rossi affair so badly.

That sounds about right, a €9m or €10m fee with the potential to go up to €16m if he's playing, scoring etc.

"It's a massive risk. He's not able to play until around March and he hasn't played consistently in a very long time. The thing is, if it pays off, it's going to be massively beneficial. Say he does get fit in March, and Fiorentina are still sitting pretty in Serie A, they'll have a great player to come on and make an impact. It will be like a third transfer window for them if it pays off. It gives them another option up-front, with Jovetic and Toni* there, amongst others. He could start scoring extra goals and be the difference from no Europe to the Europa League, or even the Europa League to the Champions League. The reason they've signed him now is that someone else will get him in the summer. No-one else is willing to take that risk, and if he's fit for Villarreal and helps them gain promotion then he's going to command a much higher transfer fee.

*I think he's a longer term replacement for Toni. What he's done this season is incredible and I don't think anyone thought he was going to do anything like this, especially given his spells with Juventus and Genoa of late, but Montella has done brilliantly here to bring him back and get him scoring goals. However, I don't think he'll be able to replicate it next season, and Rossi would be an excellent succeeder to Luca."

What I wrote on another forum.

Good result for Lazio last night, it was a poor performance but still nice to see us come back from 1-0 down to get the 3 points especially with all those around us still to play.

The win looks even better now as Inter have just been whipped 3-0 by Udinese.

As if Inter signed Rocchi, good player in his day but such a poor buy considering they're meant to be rebuilding. Sometimes I wonder what goes through the head of those in power at the two Milan clubs.

But yeah, them losing today is good news. Tough game for us at Napoli later but I'm actually quite confident. Just a shame you guys turned it round last night Hibee, I know Cagliari went down to 9 men in the end though I dunno what happened exactly....

Di Natale

Serie A comes across as a really unpredictable league these days.

Juve wins the title, everything else is entirely unpredictable.