The Italian Football Thread

It's certainly not to his advantage that he doesn't speak the language properly. I mean, after all we are talking about Italy, Serie A and AS Roma here.

I'm sure he'll manage just fine. He's a speaker of another Romance language, he'll have no trouble getting his players to understand his instructions.

He speaks 'the language of football', as FM would put it.

Rudi Garcia confirmed as new AS Roma head coach.

Anderlecht's chairman has apparently confirmed that they've accepted a €5.5m bid from us for Lucas Biglia, the player and his agent have been going on about a move to Italy for a while now so hopefully we'll manage to snap him up.

I had him at Lazio on FM.

So Gattuso gets his Sion buddy Lafferty at Palermo while it seems like the whole third-party mess with Felipe Anderson may be over for Lazio.

Aye, they finally agreed a price with us after he threatened to take them to court. After the failed bid in the winter and now all this fuss I really hope he's worth all the bother, a lot of Lazio fans don't seem very impressed with him.

Thoughts on Pablo Osvaldo?

We're being linked with him and I'm fairly unimpressed.

He's been a consistent goalscorer whenever he's played the last two seasons despite how poor they've been for the team overall, but he's a bit of a c0ck, to put it simply.

Surprised City are being linked with him if I'm honest.

You aren't the only one. I'd much prefer Lamela.

Osvaldo's a good striker, but I've never really thought of him as big club material. Roma is just about the right level to his ability, he'd add nothing of value to City.

Mario Gomez. Not bad.

Nice welcome back for the players this morning expected nothing less, the derby Coppa defeat was a shameful 'effort'.

Lazio fans have been hiring banner planes all summer and having them go over the city and up and down the beaches...

Staying with Roma, I've just read an odd story about a Roman radio station overhearing a conversation between two of Roma's directors - one had called the station and hadn't hung up it seems... Anyway, they really want Osvaldo to go and ordered him back to training ASAP so the fans have a chance to shout abuse at him. He's still on holiday in the US for some reason.
They also said Marquinhos would be sold if a €25m bid comes in and DDR is on the market as well.

It sounds too stupid to br true but in Italy you never know.

Haven't Barça already offered more than €25m for Marquinhos? Also apparently we're not signing Osvaldo any more, so that's good.

The actual sum they want is €25m after agents fees etc so the Barca bid might not have been high enough. Southampton seem to be the main English club that are targeting Osvaldo now.

Strootman arriving at the airport, quite the welcome considering he was only playing in the U21 Euro's a few weeks back. Around 20k Fiorentina fans went to Gomez's presentation at the stadium too, quality that.

Some interesting players have arrived in Serie A so far. Obviously Tevez, Llorente and Mario Gomez, but also Mertens, Callejon, now Strootman worth keeping an eye on.

How highly do you guys rate Angelo Ogbonna?

I only really know him through Fifa but I've seen he's just made a big move to Juve.

I think there's a talented player in there but he struggled to show what he could do last season. He's been on the fringes of the national side for a while now, that and the Juve move show he's rated by those who know a lot more than the likes of us.

Juve will be a big step up for him and it'll be interesting to see how he gets on, my only concern is how much playing time he'll get, at his age he really needs to be playing week in week out rather than a few games here and there. On the other hand Barzagli isn't getting any younger and Chiellini will no doubt get hurt at some point so he'll have chances to make a mark.

There were stories a few days ago about Atalanta fans going on a 'rampage' in a tank and running over cars that were Roma or Brescia coloured. Turns out it was a little more organised than that but their newest signing was actually inside the tank at the time - Link

Sassulo 2-1 Milan in a friendly. Lol.

They drew with Juventus too, but matches only lasted 45 minutes.

Reina and Higuain having medicals with Napoli. Despite losing Cavani they're building a very impressive team.

They're basically using up all the Cavani money to buy Real Madrid rejects. Like I said in the transfer thread, Napoli are becoming Real Madrid East.

You say that as if Higuain is a bad player to buy

I'd take Higuain at Old Trafford any day of the week.

Fab striker.

No thanks.

3 better players than him already.

I don't think he's worth €37m but he should still prove to be a decent signing.

Reina; Maggio, Albiol, Cannavaro, Armero/Zuniga; Inler, Behrami/Dzemaili, Mertens, Hamsik, Callejon/Insigne; Higuain.

Not bad. Fiorentina have signed Illicic too which should be another good signing for them. Roma are getting left behind

Strootman?

Rooney, RVP and?