Archive for the ‘Serie A’ Category

Chelsea v Everton - Premier League

Well, that was a lot quicker than the last time. So basically Benitez is kind of like the Harvey Keitel character in Pulp Fiction, Mr. Wolf. Someone leaves a legacy but in the process makes a bit of a mess at the end, and he just sort of swoops in and cleans up.

Total opportunist. Anyway, in case you’re catching up: Inter sack Stramaccioni, hire Walter Mazzari from Inter, Rafa goes to Napoli. Deck chairs shuffled. What it means for any of these teams…well. I think Inter kind of win here. Rafa’s not really a project man, and Napoli have become a project club.

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Yeah, there’s not much sugar-coating a 16-6-16 record, 54 points, and a 9th place table finish for a team that won the treble three years ago. So the lesson here is what, never appointment younger coaches, never hire internally, and never hire people with law degrees.

Oh and be sure to watch out for the Internet reminding you that Rafa Benitez is looking for another job. Because the last time he was at Inter, woah doctor!

Ciro Ferrara.

Ciro Ferrara.

It’s a regular feature of football history of course that when one club is successful, others try to replicate their success. Barcelona wanted to play the way Ajax did in the late `60s and so they brought in Rinus Michels in 1971 then later Johan Cruyff the player in 1973.

The two won La Liga only once together in their time at the Camp Nou but the cultural impact they had on the club and the legacy they left, which Cruyff would reinforce on his return as coach, showed that over the long-term a foreign style can become the adopter’s own and even stronger so if it coalesces organically with local identity.

Many, however, don’t take the long view or commit fully to change. They want a quick fix and follow like sheep whatever the latest fad or craze is. This approach can have disastrous effects.

In Italy, for instance, during the late `80s and early `90s, Juventus, feeling under pressure after a number of years without a league title, looked to go down the route Milan had taken.

Milan had appointed Arrigo Sacchi, a relative unknown with no background in football, and won the Scudetto, back-to-back European Cups and earned themselves a place in posterity for the style with which they played and the revolution they started.

In response, Juventus completely overhauled their structure. The Old Lady felt she had to get with the times. Long-standing president Giampiero Boniperti was gone. So too was coach Dino Zoff, even though he had just led the team to a UEFA Cup and a Coppa Italia.

It was decided Juventus needed to find their own Sacchi. Rather than looking for the best coach out there, they’d hire the most different, someone who fit the Sacchi profile of “I never realised that in order to become a jockey you had to have been a horse first.”

That coach was Gigi Maifredi.

A former champagne salesman, he wasn’t exactly the toast of Serie A but had guided Bologna to eighth place the previous season, playing a Sacchi-like 4-4-2 with zonal-marking. Imagine what he could achieve with more resources, including Roby Baggio, or so the thinking went.

It was a disaster. Juventus finished seventh. Maifredi was considered a failure and got the sack. Giovanni Trapattoni, the coach who’d won everything with the club through the late `70s to the mid `80s, was brought back.

That has always served as a lesson. Imitation might be the highest form of flattery but it can also be flawed.

When Barcelona won La Liga and the Champions League back in 2009, many looked at how they had promoted from within, handing the job to Pep Guardiola, a former player, someone who knew the club inside out, who understood what it meant to wear the shirt and how the team should play so as to honour its traditions.

Others tried to follow suit. Juventus replaced Claudio Ranieri with Ciro Ferrara. Leonardo succeeded Carlo Ancelotti at Milan. It was called the ‘Guardiola Effect’, although the appointment of Leonardo was more in the style of Fabio Capello, who’d been behind a desk like him before being offered the job.

Ultimately, Ferrara was out of his depth and was replaced by Alberto Zaccheroni in the spring as Juve ended up in seventh place. Leonardo walked having grown disillusioned with Silvio Berlusconi, whom he likened to Narcissus, after producing some fantastic but flaky football.
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In the pandemonium that followed Juventus’s home win over Palermo earlier this month, supporters twice invaded the pitch. The Bianconeri had just been crowned champions of Italy for the second year running, prompting over-eager fans to rush the field in the hopes of joining their heroes’ celebrations. But by the time they reached their destination, most of Juventus’s players had already fled, sprinting down the tunnel and taking refuge in the changing rooms.

One player, though, did not run. Gigi Buffon stayed on the field as long as the stewards would allow, accepting a T-shirt from one fan—a member of the Viking Juve group of Ultras—and hugs from many more before finally being dragged away by a posse of men in fluorescent orange jackets. It was a telling scene. Few players identify as closely with the fans as Buffon, a man who still considers himself to be one of them.

The only difference is, Buffon does not support Juve. He likes his employers very much, as you might expect for a player who has spent 12 such happy and successful years with a single club, even choosing to stick by them after they were dropped to Serie B as a result of the Calciopoli scandal in 2006. But Buffon’s true love remains Carrarese, the team he supported as a boy.

Growing up in Carrara, a coastal town in northern Tuscany, Buffon quickly became obsessed with his local team. As a child he would watch games from the Curva Nord of the Stadio dei Marmi, a small concrete bowl with space for 5,000 or so people. As he grew older, he began to stand among the Ultras, bare-chested in his preferred game-day attire of blue jeans and an open leather jacket with no shirt underneath.

At times he even fought for his side. Asked during a 1998 interview with La Repubblica if he had ever traded blows with an opposition supporter, Buffon confirmed that he had. “Every now and then, yes,” he said. “After a game between Carrarese and Bologna five years ago, which Bologna won through absolute robbery, we caused a bit of a scene outside with the opposition fans.

“I’m not saying it’s right, but if you limit yourself to fighting with fists then it doesn’t seem that tragic to me either. The tragedy is when someone brings a knife with them from home.”
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Ugliness at the San Siro

And I’m not talking about Milan’s third kit which is an affront to common decency. Sulley Muntari was shown a red card in the 41st minute for antics that can only be described as foolish. Muntari was trying to prevent the referee from giving Mario Balotelli a card. Holding the ref’s arm, losing his mind etc. obviously didn’t help things. Balotelli has been the target of racist taunts from Roma fans, chants so glaring the public address announcer has told them to stop or risk having the game suspended. It’s 0-0 at halftime.

Update

The game ended in a draw, but the stench of stupidity remains.


Video via James Dart

Cavani
Good on these Napoli fans for leaving the guy some food and water.

Image via Matt Barker

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The Lead

A cascade of first division clinched wins this weekend!

Well, two.

It’s easy to be cynical about Juve and Ajax earning their respective league wins in Italy and the Netherlands, seeing as they share 61 titles between them (no, not 63). But both Antonio Conte and Frank de Boer (the latter in particular) are no mere caretakers riding the crest of their clubs’ historical dominance.

In Conte’s case, it’s his second successive Scudetto, clinched with a 1-0 defeat of Palermo. The result reflected Juve’s strength’; while their 67 goals this season is among the lowest the big five European leagues and is tied with second place Napoli, they only conceded twenty goals. That’s only five more than Bayern conceded this season (which should underline how effing incredible Bayern have been). The likes of Chiellini and Bonucci have been integral in that defense, and certainly the presence of Pirlo, Paul Pogba and Arturo Vidal in front of them hasn’t hurt either.

Ajax on the other hand faced an incredible challenge from PSV, Feyenoord and Vitesse almost to the very end of the Eredivisie. With a midfield steeped in Frank de Boer’s throwback Dutch principles, the veteran talent of 33-year-old Christian Poulsen complimented well the goal-scoring ability of Siem de Jong and the incredible season-long consistency of Christian Eriksen, whose talent, versatility and creativity will put his name in many a headline during this summer’s transfer grind.

For de Boer, it is an historic accomplishment. Three Ajax titles both as a player and a coach. Moreover, de Boer’s team can join Louis van Gaal and Rinus Michels with three consecutive wins, major company indeed.

Same old same old perhaps, but two champions very much of their time.
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