The Enduring Legacy of Antonio Cassano: Serie A 2010/11

Supporting Fiorentina as per usual.

My guess is 4 stabbings, 1 death.

Roma for me as ever, though I hear good things about Genoa and will adopt them as plucky seconds.

Ok can anyone explain why Udinese aren't the sort of team competing for Europe every year? Their players are supremely talented (Di Natale, Sanchez, Zapata, Asamoah, Handovic) and have spent many years together. While they do often have to sell other good players (Iaquinta, Muntari, Quag, Pepe has gone on loan, Felipe etc.), they still start every season with a very strong xi. It was the talk of Sanchez as one of the best young wingers in Europe right now - which I agree with - on the naming rights thread that made me ask this? wtf clubs like this need 4 managers in a year?

imo serie a is more interesting than in a long time this, with ibra to milan and benitez to inter the odds have certainly evened out. supporting roma but they had a terrible mercato as expected.

re udinese, it's weird, typically they're beating juve away one week and the next losing at home against reggina. they would probably gain more from being able to keep their best managers (spalletti) than their best players though.

Yeah now Milan seem to be providing Inter with genuine competition and Rafa has to prove himself, I am super pumped about this season.

with ibra to milan and benitez to inter the odds have certainly evened out.

me-ow!

Haha, didn't notice that

spotter's badges very much in character i guess

News of today: Robinho to Milan, Borriello to Roma.
Berlusconi buying big names = political elections approaching fast.

Well that and a much needed Kaka replacement(s), actually spending the money Real gave them unlike Utd.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/philminshull/zlatan595.jpg

i fucking hate this kit design and want it to go away.

oh hai ive been playing wiv tape and now need to play a game of football

Screw the bbc article btw. 'milan buy zlatan and robinho, they are now going to get relegated.' ummm yeah because zlatan has never proved himself in serie a, huh? especially not as top scorer for many consecutive years. and that robinho, he's never been a destructive force when put together with brazilian teammates like say ronaldinho and pato? there is no way milan could alright after signing two world class forwards to replace shite like borriello!

There has been a great debate in the press whether Milan should play all four of their so-called 'fabulous four' attackers - Robinho, Ibrahimovic, Ronaldinho and Pato - together at the same time. Robinho believes it is workable.

"Any team can play with four strikers. The most important thing is that Milan score goals, not individual players," he noted.

Great thread title!

everyone in the milan camp seems to think it's possible, most of all berlusconi himself, which is probably not a good sign. signing of robinho doesn't seem that thought through imo.

I don't think it'll work unless Ronnie moves into the Cesc/Lampard #8 role. R&R aren't traditional 'defend occasionally' wingers.

       Abbiati
Zambrotta Nesta   Onyewu Oddo?
       Ambrosini Pirlo
            Dinhole
Pato                  Robinho
          Zlatan

looks p dope tbrr. still not as good as inter, who are a perfect team bar the manager.

yeah it looks dope but also a bit insane. otoh the alternative is more or less to replace ronnie with seedorf and that doesn't feel like an immediate improvement either.

Great thread title!

― Rocky's Banter Cruise (Sgt. Biscuits), Thursday, 9 September 2010 20:14 (17 minutes ago)

maybe we'd get more traffic without the kinda alienating Rafael 'Ooooh Zonal Marking' Benny Tiz part

i'm sorry chris will not be participating because of it.

i don't share the idea the benitez is shit, tactically he is pretty great

but i'm looking forward to seeing how he'll manage to fuck up inter's squad/morale/finances

worst thing about serie a this season is juve getting rid of diego at a huge loss after one season in which their established players were even worse

we REALLY need a thread to define and categorise in decreasing order of importance the various skills required from a top class manager tbh.

also- ronaldinho robinho pato just randomly swapping positions behind and around ibrahimovic can't not work if football is to mean anything

My question about that the other day was prompted by the lack of obvious candidates for the Villa job - in days of yore you'd've'd a dozen candidates in no time, but Sven was the only 'name' really in the picture until someone had the (excellent) idea of giving Houllier a call

Yeah yeah timing etc, but guys like Venables, Walter Smith, Billy Davies, Dave Jones, even Bryan Robson would once have been plausible candidates - that ilk just seems sort of laughable this time around

end of the era of the 'experts' myth. ties in with the banking crash, imo, and the cult of the manager can be lumped in with the worshipping of celebrity ceo's.

eh not really, probably,

tho i may as well write a thesis on something

I've got the day off tomorrow, will knock out 200,000 words on what makes a great manager.

Where did Diego go? And for how much? Putting the name Diego into wikipedia ends up w/ thousands of options I presume.

Oooh... Wolfsberg? Fucking hell Mclaren is a terrific manager.

wolfsburg and hamburg always seem to pick up those types

schalke too, i guess

wolfsburg's been doing good shopping in italy last few years. also picked up kjaer this summer.

also- ronaldinho robinho pato just randomly swapping positions behind and around ibrahimovic can't not work if football is to mean anything

― k¸ (darraghmac), Thursday, 9 September 2010 20:48 (21 minutes ago)

you'd need world xi quality gk/defence/dm behind that lot though. lúcio, samuel, maicon, césar and cambiasso and maybe it would work.

i hate all the crowing about how a few trinkets can't disguise how the rest are old or shit, but who gives a fuck? i don't have any emotional investment in silvio berlusconi parading a scudetto in election year but if milan play RRIP or just RIP they'll at least be worth watching

xp, yeah the fuckers, another one from right under our noses. add kjaer & huntelaar and i'd be certain of top 4 again

rip milan

but i'm looking forward to seeing how he'll manage to fuck up inter's squad/morale/finances

this exactly. i figure a recent treble winning team, with no major transfers either in or out, would first of all need a great motivator/inspirator and that he is not

also can't wait to see how he affects the careers of santon and coutinho, poss the two most exciting u20 players going.

xp y'know i haven't thought about it any more deeply than 'replacing mourinho with benitez lol' but fuckin hell you're so right. the contrast is gonna be .......... interesting.

also hope someone smuggles in a camera to training to see his reaction the first time kerlon does the seal dribble

well they did win the league three times with mancini at the helm so they must be sort of used to dour negative coaching...

true true

mancini bought maicon, zlatan, figo, a 1000 different south american strikers, made stankovic the heart of the team - not exactly 'negative' football. well, to italian standards.

well he's pretty negative in approach...unless that's just since he moved to city. rafa did try and buy figo that summer!

currently juve 3 sampdoria 2

krasic looking good, nice to see 1000 year old alex del piero still at it

what are the best sites for serie A insight/writing?

also has this ever turned up in a garage/funky/whatever song?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHXfHFNlJ_w

:D @ Cesena toppling the silvio galacticos

also daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn roma lost 5-1? lol. ranieri out.

I love Gazza's celebration there, it was a different, more joyous era.

Looking through the weekend results, nearly all the names look Italian. Is it only Inter can afford expensive foreigners any more?

juve & milan still exist, also udinese as the serie a equivilant of wigan.

Still, all that space for domestic talent - they must have a killer national team.

yeah you'd think they'd have won a world cup in the past five years.

They're no New Zealand that's for sure - so many professionals they had to leave one out of their wc squad.

:D 0-7. 4 alexis sanchez goals!

stepover on the one on one. http://www.101greatgoals.com/videodisplay/palermo-udinese-serie-feb-2011-8617982/ <3

milan 0 - 0 napoli h/t

booking for pato, decent bodycheck

stepover on the one on one

this was fucking awesome

toto di natale, secret best player

The Milan derby is worth watching right now. 1-0 to Milan after 40 mins, extremely open game.

Wonderful derby. Eto'o missed a sitter though, offside or not.

2-0 looked offside, though I didn't see a good angle.

Was a smidgeon behind the ball, probably level with the last man anyway. Great game, Seedorf's become conspicuously amazing in the last few mins.

terrific game this. seedorf would still be a great player if you always played with one man more.

Van Pummel drives me nuts. He has the ability to play clean but seems to relish being cheap.

commentator said this is zanetti's 35th consecutive derby. that's just ridiculous.

Cassano wins it single-handedly

looool cassano

hahaha! and a red card

that game had everything

except zlatan

couple of interesting games today. napoli (3rd) - lazio (5th) is on right now. allegedly napoli president de laurentiis slapped lazio's claudio lotito in the face during a dinner earlier this week. so there's that.

later tonight roma - juventus.

omg this puts last night's derby to shame. cavani hattrick makes it 4-3 in the 88th minute. reja sent off. and now there's a proper fight going down. game of the year.

description makes me want

that napoli game sounds so sweet, why was it on so early?

Thanks for notifying us in the 88th minute, man.

napoli (3rd) - lazio (5th) is on right now

Hm, not covering myself in glory there.

many will have wanted to watch it

to have watched it?

they will have to be of watched it

napoli udinese

sanchez is out :(

napoli go 3 points behind milan if they win.

Inter lost last night iirc and are finally out of it

yup, 8 points adrift. which i am very pleased about.

sampdoria are going to get relegated. which means if i finally go to genoa to watch them next season i might be watching some team i've never heard of :/

from finishing 4th to sitting 3rd bottom :/

mauricio isla injured now. disaster for chile.

well this quasi-chilean watching this game anyway.

gokhan inler just scored a peach.

twa nil udinese. another good goal. german denis.

sampdoria lost in the 96th minute of the genoa derby. serie b beckons. so my two european football trips of next season will be second division.

St Pauli?

ding ding :)

altho also considering rayo of madrid, who will be la liga. so i can have some top-flight.

Last time they were in La Liga their sponsor was just a big picture of a bee, which made for one of my favourite strips ever.

they've just changed owner iirc. no bees involved with either party unfortunately. they have a far left ultra group called the bukaneros, which makes them more interesting to me than the other two in madrid (tho my, somewhat confusingly communist, madrid supporting wee cousin probably won't be into it).

oh also milan won their 18th scudetto on saturday night. 0-0 wi roma. boring as fuck match. they won't care. ibra 8 leagues in a row (tho 2 juve been rescinded, they may be reinstated and they weren't his fault).

http://mit.zenfs.com/210/2011/05/x610-150.jpg

just in case that didn't make any sense:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgyJR-1LYvE

anyway, still the CL place to play for, with both rome teams and udinese within reach. i'd like to see udinese finish 4th, maybe that could keep sanchez, isla and inler at the club at least one more year.

That said, they have been doing well off the pitch, so much so that last season they made more money than any other club in Serie A, though a couple of points need to be emphasised before people get too excited. First, the profit after tax was still fairly low at just €4.4 million; second, only four teams actually recorded a profit, the others being Catania €2.5 million, Livorno €1.8 million and Napoli €0.3 million, while the other 16 clubs all made losses.

The reality is that Italian football continues to be in a financial mess with clubs living well above their means, as they have been hit by falling crowds, accusations of corruption and occasional violence and racism, so being the most profitable club in Serie A is only really equivalent to being the tallest man in Lilliput. Despite the ever increasing revenue, largely driven by television money, which for the first time last season surpassed €1.7 billion, the combined losses of the 20 teams in Serie A amounted to €193.5 million and would have been even higher without the hefty €381.5 million profits on player sales, including the exceptional transfers of Ibrahimovic and Kaka to Spain.

re: television money

Juventus President Andrea Agnelli was even more severe with the Lega decision.

“There are five clubs who between them represent 75 per cent of the fans, but are forced to accept the decisions of the other teams. We have 3m people in our potential audience compared to the 300,000 of the other 15.

“We will appeal to the CONI (Italian Olympic Committee) to ensure the development of this sport. We are united with the other four big clubs and could leave the Lega.

“Does this mean possibly playing in the Premier League or French Ligue 1? We are evaluating all options.”

A hoy hoy's post is c+p'ed from here, in case it's not obvious. I'm compelled to point that out because the original article's pretty good and worth reading, but also because ahh deserves to be exposed - this marks a new low imo.

lol yeah i meant to post a follow up but got distracted.

only just seen this..milan scudetto celebrations kevin prince boateng does his MJ impression
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKjS5Og8TEg

I posted it on the "WTF" thread along with a clip of Massimo Oddo doing a drunken but speedy lap of the Olympic stadium with shampoo in his hair. Was really impressed with KPB, I figured he'd just do a 10-second goal-celebration sort of homage.

and the ongoing tradition of hilarious milan celebrations continues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqOM58xT9zY&feature=player_embedded