Hype, rumours and scandal
Roberto Gotta
Less than a month has passed since Italy returned home from its unsuccessful Euro 2004 campaign. It wasn't pretty then, and it does not look any better now.
Alberto Gilardino: Should Italy have taken a risk on the Parma man? (TonyO'Brien/Empics)
The Italian Football Association (FIGC) wasted no time in appointing Marcello Lippi as Giovanni Trapattoni's successor, but few believe the fortunes of the team will take a massive upturn, as Lippi will have the same limitations and problems Trapattoni had.
As is customary after each failed attempt to win a trophy, the can of worms was opened as soon as Italy realized they were going home, with a litany of grievances and finger-pointing: the coach had picked the wrong squad, leaving Alberto Gilardino at home while other young (or younger, see Rooney, Wayne) strikers were showing no signs of nerves or inexperience in Portugal.
Sponsors, agents, clubs directors, family members were mixing with the players at all times and creating a chaotic and unruly environment. And the most populist explanation of all was that Italy had been too pampered, a point so rhetoric and demagogical that only the notorious Processo di Biscard', Italy's long-running scream-a-thon Tv football show, could pick it up, comparing the plushness of Italy's hotel in Portugal with the allegedly simpler, near-monastic retreat where England had stayed.
Someone perhaps forgot to point out to those guys - not that it would have mattered - that England did not go much farther than Italy, and had the Azzurri won it all, as they certainly could have with their talent, none of this drivel would have come to light.
Since meddlesome agents and club directors are going to be around Italy's camp in future international events, too, Lippi had better be prepared and take this excuse out of the equation.
But things aren't pretty on the club front, either. One of the worst side-effects of Italy's early exit from Euro 2004 was that sports daily newspapers immediately switched their focus to the calciomercato, the transfer market, with one of them (no names here, no one's perfect after all) one day devoting their front page to a huge picture of Perugia's Ze Maria, who was allegedly close to joining Inter, while the result of one of the most exciting Euro 2004 matches, Portugal-England, was squeezed in much smaller print on the top left corner.
That was a sign that the silliest of all calcio seasons, the calciomercato season, was on, a crescendo of rumours, innuendos and 'sure' deals which never materialize, usually reported with the caveat of 'everything's in place for the transfer, only the relevant signatures are missing', as if those weren't the only things that mattered.
There's even a 25-minute TV show, Calcio Mercato, aired each day by national channel Rete 4 at 7.30pm, with the purpose of detailing the same day's transfers, rumours and developments.
Capello: Juventus held 2-2 (TonyMarshall/Empics)
The hype hasn't matched the facts, so far: with the exception of Hernan Crespo and Jaap Stam's move to Milan, and perhaps Edgar Davids and Juan Veron's to Inter, there has't been an earth-shattering purchases, and even some of the above (Veron's and Crespo's) have been loans, with Chelsea picking up part of the players' wages.
And the outbound traffic has been top-heavy: international players like Stefano Fiore and Bernardo Corradi, of hard-up Lazio, went abroad, both to Valencia, and Uruguayan star forward Chevanton joined Monaco after no one in Italy apparently could find the money to grab his contract from Lecce.
As Milan captain Paolo Maldini admitted to La Gazzetta dello Sport the other day, the summer's most shocking development happened nearly two months ago, when Juventus stunned everybody by announcing their new coach would be Roma's Fabio Capello.
Capello had fiercely criticized Juventus in the past and had gone as far as saying he'd never have anything to do with them, sprinkling his interviews with references to Juve as 'those Jesuits' and other delicacies.
He received a cool welcome by the Juve fans at the beginning of the bianconeri's pre-season training two weeks ago, and has now become a hate figure in Rome, whose fans have turned against him with predictable cries of 'Judas'.
Things are being compounded by the prolonged negotiations between the two clubs for the transfer of Brazilian midfielder Emerson to the Turin club: talks began as soon as the Serie A season was over, but an agreement hasn't been found so far and Emerson outraged everybody, joining Capello on the list of despised former Giallorossi, when he did not show up for Roma's pre-season workouts and sent instead a doctor's note stating that he was 'depressed'.
He's not the only one, apparently: newly-promoted Livorno's striker Cristiano Lucarelli apparently suffers from a similar clinical status, which prevented him from turning up at Torino's camp.
Emerson: Deal completed. (GraziaNeri/GettyImages)
Torino had loaned him to his hometown club last year and Lucarelli raised a few eyebrows by saying he'd settle for a much lower salary in order to stay with Livorno, but Torino are rightly asking for compensation and an agreement doesn't seem near at the time of writing.
Bizarrely (or perhaps not), this happened just as Lucarelli's biography, written by his agent (only in Italy...), was coming out, with the ominous title of 'You can keep your million', a reference to the fact Lucarelli bravely puts playing for his hometown club above any big-money contract.
All of this while the inquiry into the betting scandal which emerged in late May took another turn for the worse: fourteen more persons are under investigation by the police, among them, disturbingly, two Serie A referees, Luca Palanca and Marco Gabriele, plus more Serie B players and the chairman and sporting director of relegated Modena.
The number of 2003-04 matches 'officially' deemed as suspicious has grown to twenty between Serie A and Serie B, seven of them involving Messina, newly promoted to Serie A.
No one knows where this will lead, but the mere fact two referees are being investigated has brought another dark cloud over Italian football.
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发表于 2004-8-22 21:31:00
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