The Italian Football Thread

They don't have a natural sub for Milito, Rocchi is nothing more than a 6 month stop gap who'll sit on the bench, play when he's needed and be content doing so. In the summer Longo will come back and they'll have a few months to find someone better if needed.

Cagliari going down to 9 all started with their keeper clattering into Klose, he was booked and a penalty was given, the keeper then kept arguing with the ref till he got another yellow, the same happened to Cossu I think.

Hell of a game by Sampdoria.

Aye, it was some comeback, down to 10 with half an hour gone in Turin and they manage to get back to 2-1. Buffon was dreadful for both goals though, a rare off day for him.

Haha, grazie Samp e Pescara!

Results have really gone Lazio's way so far with Inter, Fiorentina and Juve all losing. Now we just need a draw between Napoli and Roma with lots of injuries and red cards.


Here's highlights of the Fiorentina v Pescara game, including some of Pescara keeper Perin's record 15 saves:

Link

Got raped 4-1. Cavani hat-trick. Don't know why I was confident, Napoli are probably the team most suited to play against us. If Ozzy was fit enough to be brought on after an hour and do 10x more than Destro then surely he was fit enough to start. Although it probably wouldn't have made too much difference.

Cavani is a god. I genuinely hope with all my heart that he stays at Napoli, I really want to see him and Hamsik lead them to a Scudetto at some point. Just need for De Laurentiis to get his head out of his arse and finally bring in some top quality centre backs for them to really be able to contend.

I know what you mean, with the likes of Astori being linked with €9m/€10m bids and Bocchetti both out of contract and hinting that he'd be open to a move to his hometown it's not impossible for them to bring those two in. Couple that with Armero possibly arriving and you have a real upgrade on what they have now.

I can't see it happening though.

Aye, adding Astori and Bocchetti to the back three would push them much closer towards contending. Certainly better than trying to bring in some Argentinian who's never played in Europe before, which seems like their usual strategy for improving the defence.

Astori is off to Southampton, apparently.

Also maybe Coutinho.

Aye, I really don't get what would attact Astori to Southampton, new league and higher wages perhaps but there's bigger clubs sniffing around. Then there's the price, IIRC they rejected a bid of at least €15m from a Russian club in the summer.

As for Coutinho, it'd be a real shame if Inter lost him. He looked good early in the season but there's not really a place for him in their 3-4-3, still, given his potential they really should keep him and he can certainly do better than Southampton. I also have a bad feeling they'll try and shoehorn him into a 442 like they did with Ramirez who was stuck out on the wing.

Not only do you get to move into the biggest league in the world on massive wages (probably with a nice signing-on fee and a cheap get-out clause), you can put yourself in the limelight for bigger clubs taking you on if you impress.

I wouldn't say he needs to move to a club like Southampton to get noticed, he's been playing well in the Serie A for years and he's on the fringes of the national team. Your club would have to have a pretty poor scouting system to not know what he can do.

Edit: If they were the only club looking at him I'd understand but most of the big Italian sides have been credited with an interest, even our DS met with Cagliari after the game at the weekend and Astori was discussed.

Good win for us over a near full strength Catania side tonight. We went with an experimental 3-5-1-1 formation with Cana in the middle of the defence and it really worked, we totally dominated possession in the first half, pinning Catania back and closing them down on the edge of their area which is quite unusual for Lazio.

I just love how FIGC are basically giving FIFA and UEFA a big FU over the whole racism thing.

The FIGC president has gone out and said that they will support the suspension or cancellation of any game featuring racist incidents.

Milan will pay Empoli €4m for 50% of Saponara. He is currently co-owned by Parma and Empoli. Also, Galliani is after Zaccardo, meh.

Chievo getting hammered 4-0, good start to this weekend's games.

Catania away today. Probably the nearest Serie A equivalent to Stoke away. A point wouldn't be a bad result in a one-off game but we need to win after last week's result at Napoli.

Tough game against Atalanta, we missed Gonzalez in the first half and the midfield really struggled to keep the ball or do anything with it. Floccari and Cana came on at ht and really changed things, we had two or three good chances before Floccari's goal and could have have another one or two before Brivio put it past his keeper for our second.

Just three points off Juve, 10 clear of Roma and unbeaten in our last 14 games.

Almost forgot, Sau got another goal for Cagliari today. He really impressed me when we played them the other week and looks like he could do a job for a much bigger side. If we can somehow flog Zarate to someone I'd love to see Sau replace him.

It's a tough enough game without DDR being dropped for no reason at all, Pjanic suspended, Totti pulling up in the warm up and Ozzy injured.

It's not surprising therefore, that we lost. 10 points behind Lazio now as Hibee says and 8 points off 3rd. Yay.

Fiorentina have had their stadium plans approved - link

In less positive news, for me anyway, the Italian media have decided to start going on about how Lazio could be hit with a 5 point penalty if Stefano Mauri is proven to have been part of two suspicious Lazio games.
This is the same branch of the investigation that saw Napoli hit with a 2 point penalty and Cannavaro/Grava banned. It's been going on for months now and the Mauri stuff started with his arrest in the summer so it's a little strange they decided to start going on about it when Lazio are doing so well.

After winning at Fiorentina in the cup last night AET, we've now got Inter at home on Sunday night in the league and on Wednesday night in the Coppa semi first leg. With the return leg a week later. So playing Inter 3 times in what, 10 days

The bans for Cannavaro and Grava and the point-deduction given to Napoli have been lifted upon appeal.

Great news for Serie A!

Hopefully for Lazio as well. By all accounts the evidence against Mauri, and by extension the club as a whole was less concrete than that against Napoli. The main witness against Mauri was roundly discredited the other week but now it seems their trying to get an extension to continue the investigation until the end of the season.

You can imagine how it'll all kick off if we managed to finally snag a CL spot then lost it after copping a -5 points penalty.

But bad news, short term anyway, for Roma who are now even further behind the top 3. Not that it was likely we were gonna get it anyway........

The second leg of the Inter semi-final is in April now. So playing them on Sunday and Wednesday both at home but then the away leg isn't for ages afterwards.

Why would you post that?

Also he has a stupid hair cut.

We really dropped the ball with him, didn't we?

Really wish I'd told him to stay at United that day I was stood next to him in town. I'm sure it would've changed his mind.

Future superstar.

Cheeky.