[ITA] Serie a 2006-07 (68 Viewers)
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Chelsea: Terry ha scelto l'Inter
10:10 del 05 maggio
John Terry
Terry ha scelto, il futuro è Inter. Lascerà il Chelsea: vuole diventare nerazzurro e spinge per Lampard. Costa una ventina di milioni: Mancini è andato a studiarlo dal vivo a Londra contro il Liverpool. Insieme col capitano dei Blues può partire anche Lampard, che è un altro grande obiettivo nerazzurro.
Anche Clerc per Mancini. Un'idea per i nerazzurri. Arriva dalla Francia e costa 4 milioni. L'Inter frena su Mesto (niente aste con Juve e Milan): occhi sul francese del Lione.
(Corriere dello Sport)
If Inter do manage to get Terry they will have a superb team, hope Terry either stays at Chelsea or goes to a team in Spain or Juve.
10:10 del 05 maggio
John Terry
Terry ha scelto, il futuro è Inter. Lascerà il Chelsea: vuole diventare nerazzurro e spinge per Lampard. Costa una ventina di milioni: Mancini è andato a studiarlo dal vivo a Londra contro il Liverpool. Insieme col capitano dei Blues può partire anche Lampard, che è un altro grande obiettivo nerazzurro.
Anche Clerc per Mancini. Un'idea per i nerazzurri. Arriva dalla Francia e costa 4 milioni. L'Inter frena su Mesto (niente aste con Juve e Milan): occhi sul francese del Lione.
(Corriere dello Sport)
If Inter do manage to get Terry they will have a superb team, hope Terry either stays at Chelsea or goes to a team in Spain or Juve.
Moratti: I wanted Capello
Saturday 5 May, 2007
Inter President Massimo Moratti has confirmed he tried to sign Fabio Capello and Eric Cantona in recent years, but explains why he opted for Roberto Mancini.
A year ago the patron told newspapers he considered Capello to be the best Coach in the world and there were strong rumours the former Juventus boss was set to be the next tactician on the San Siro bench.
“Capello had proved, albeit as we later discovered with a great deal of help, that he knew how to lead the squad and win,” admitted Moratti on Sky Italia television.
“The duty of a President is to give the fans the best there is, even if one has other preferences. At the end of the day, my preference for Mancini won out.”
Mancio’s position was in serious doubt earlier this term after a stuttering start to Serie A and two defeats in the first two Champions League games.
“Mancini rang me up when the newspapers were full of talk he was about to be sacked. He precisely said to me: ‘I want to give you some advice. Don’t fire the Coach, because this year Inter will win everything.’
“I laughed, as the serious way he said it – like a disinterested third party – was fantastic! I’d never heard it put so well, although in truth I had never even considered sacking him.”
This fondness for Mancini stretches back many years, as in November 1995 Moratti tried to sign him the same evening as the Sampdoria hitman was sent off – and later given a five-match ban – for insulting the referee.
“I had the same thing with Cantona, calling him when he had been suspended,” smiled the Inter patron.
“Evidently it is the destiny of great champions to end up like that. I separated the bans from the immense talent these men had and believed both Mancini and Cantona would have given real character to my squad. As a team, we were somewhat tactically rebellious, so they would have fit right in.
“We met at dinner and I have to say Mancini’s personality has not changed in the intervening 12 years. He had a strong character, was sure of what he was saying, albeit with the same shyness he has now. He was charming and grateful for my interest, but was too emotionally tied to Sampdoria. That dinner was the start and he got here eventually.”
Next season the battle with Juventus will not only be in the newspapers, but also on the field when the Bianconeri complete their promotion from Serie B.
“There must be rivalry and antagonism between two ambitious sides, but I believe the rancour and bitterness will have dissipated by then. Some may enjoy stoking that fire in the papers, but I am sure this tension will drop.”
The rivalry with Milan is also a big factor in the final weeks of the campaign, as Moratti is torn between club and country for the Milan-Liverpool Champions League Final.
“It is not easy to wildly support Milan… I can imagine if they had already won the trophy, they would then be annoyed to see Inter take the Scudetto. We are neighbours, but if every year we got to divide up the competitions, it would not be a bad thing.”
====
Moratti sure knows how to make fool of himself.
Saturday 5 May, 2007
Inter President Massimo Moratti has confirmed he tried to sign Fabio Capello and Eric Cantona in recent years, but explains why he opted for Roberto Mancini.
A year ago the patron told newspapers he considered Capello to be the best Coach in the world and there were strong rumours the former Juventus boss was set to be the next tactician on the San Siro bench.
“Capello had proved, albeit as we later discovered with a great deal of help, that he knew how to lead the squad and win,” admitted Moratti on Sky Italia television.
“The duty of a President is to give the fans the best there is, even if one has other preferences. At the end of the day, my preference for Mancini won out.”
Mancio’s position was in serious doubt earlier this term after a stuttering start to Serie A and two defeats in the first two Champions League games.
“Mancini rang me up when the newspapers were full of talk he was about to be sacked. He precisely said to me: ‘I want to give you some advice. Don’t fire the Coach, because this year Inter will win everything.’
“I laughed, as the serious way he said it – like a disinterested third party – was fantastic! I’d never heard it put so well, although in truth I had never even considered sacking him.”
This fondness for Mancini stretches back many years, as in November 1995 Moratti tried to sign him the same evening as the Sampdoria hitman was sent off – and later given a five-match ban – for insulting the referee.
“I had the same thing with Cantona, calling him when he had been suspended,” smiled the Inter patron.
“Evidently it is the destiny of great champions to end up like that. I separated the bans from the immense talent these men had and believed both Mancini and Cantona would have given real character to my squad. As a team, we were somewhat tactically rebellious, so they would have fit right in.
“We met at dinner and I have to say Mancini’s personality has not changed in the intervening 12 years. He had a strong character, was sure of what he was saying, albeit with the same shyness he has now. He was charming and grateful for my interest, but was too emotionally tied to Sampdoria. That dinner was the start and he got here eventually.”
Next season the battle with Juventus will not only be in the newspapers, but also on the field when the Bianconeri complete their promotion from Serie B.
“There must be rivalry and antagonism between two ambitious sides, but I believe the rancour and bitterness will have dissipated by then. Some may enjoy stoking that fire in the papers, but I am sure this tension will drop.”
The rivalry with Milan is also a big factor in the final weeks of the campaign, as Moratti is torn between club and country for the Milan-Liverpool Champions League Final.
“It is not easy to wildly support Milan… I can imagine if they had already won the trophy, they would then be annoyed to see Inter take the Scudetto. We are neighbours, but if every year we got to divide up the competitions, it would not be a bad thing.”
====
Moratti sure knows how to make fool of himself.
Tinkerman to the rescue
When Claudio Ranieri took over Parma they looked doomed, yet today they could stay in Serie A against all the odds
Yellow: not the fashionable colour to be wearing in Europe this spring. In France, the canaries of Nantes look relegated from the top flight for the first time since anybody can remember. In England, Watford already are. Germany’s Borussia Dortmund, Champions League winners a decade ago, flirted perilously in their fluorescent jerseys with an exit from the Bundesliga. And for most of the past nine months, Italy’s Parma were as good as tying bright yellow and blue ribbons around the gateposts to Serie B.
By the end of this afternoon, Parma might have moved a step closer to staying in Serie A, thanks to the man presenting himself on a sunny afternoon at the club’s practice ground. He wears a close-fitting training top, with a bright yellow cross on what we might be allowed to call a Chelsea-blue background, hugging a figure most 45-year-olds would envy.
Fifty-five-year-old Claudio Ranieri appears no greyer, no older than 27 months ago when he last managed a football club. He reports that he did “nothing” in his period on redundancy pay, but he kept in shape.
Ranieri, sacked as Valencia manager in February 2005, eight months after being replaced by Chelsea who he had taken to the semi-finals of the Champions League and second in the Premiership - yes, he’s aware of the echoes - was “bored”. So when his phone rang in February this year with an offer to coach again in Serie A, he wanted it. Ranieri was never by nature yellow, never cowardly. If he had a caricature, it was for being too bold, at least in his team changes, the Tinkerman of Stamford Bridge.
Saving Parma was a tall order. Twelve games ago, when he stepped into the job vacated by Stefano Pioli, they were 19th in the table with a mere 15 points. Morale had slumped, the photos on the training ground walls no longer generated corporate pride, they accused the current players. The posters show the Uefa Cup winners of 1995 and 1999, reminders of an era in which the city of Parma was nearly as celebrated for its team as for producing the world’s greatest gratable cheese and a delicious cured ham.
“Look at those pictures,” Ranieri urges. We fill in the names: Fabio Cannavaro in yellow-and-blue hoops, Lilian Thuram alongside him. Gianfranco Zola spent some of his best years here; ditto Gianluigi Buffon, Hernan Crespo and Juan Sebastian Veron.
You could go on. Ranieri mentioned the Milan striker Alberto Gilardino, one of Serie A’s hottest shots two seasons ago, to show Parma’s reputation for nurturing excellence was not just a history now yellowing around the edges.
A little like Dortmund in Germany and a lot like several clubs in Italy, Parma’s plight is a cautionary tale about big business’s relationship with football and the rapid cycle of boom and bust. For a period in the mid-to-late 1990s, when the Italian game had global preeminence, big multinationals were backing Serie A clubs with a enthusiasm akin to the shine American money now takes to the Premiership.
Ranieri remembers the frisson. Calcio seemed no longer the domain of the big three, Juventus, Milan and Internazionale. “There was Parma, there was Lazio. And remember Roma spent a lot of money to win the scudetto in 2001. But now there isn’t the money of 10 years ago. A lot of the money is in England and Spain and the clubs there are spending. The champion players don’t go to Italy now, they want to go to Chelsea, United, Real Madrid, Barcelona and maybe some still to Milan and Inter. But you’ve seen with Roma, how the money supply closes and they can still start again, and are doing well. Look at Lazio – fourth in Serie A – even after Cragnotti [the magnate who led them to near-bankruptcy].”
And Parma? They boomed with the financial backing of the dairy giant Parmalat, and suffered when the company cut back in crisis. “We had been three years under administration,” Ranieri points out. “Of course we can’t be Milan or Inter. We can be like Sampdoria or Udinese. We can’t get to where we were 10 years ago, because money is important. A team with a lot of money can get away with making mistakes.”
Ten weeks ago, Parma had no margin for error. Ranieri signed his contract, to the end of the season, and his first three matches in charge, a Serie A game against Sampdoria and two legs of a Uefa Cup defeat against Sporting Braga of Portugal, ended in 1-0 losses. He needed a rousing speech to the dressing-room. It went like this: “Okay, now it’s 12 midnight, sooner or later it will be one o’clock. It looks dark. Then it will be two o’clock and slowly, slowly we’ll see the light. And, remember, if I came here, it is because I believe it’s possible.”
It had been a long time since Ranieri was required to play rescuer. His previous appointment had been to take over the Spanish champions, Valencia, in 2004. Before that, he had been at Chelsea. Might the skills needed for a relegation spat have turned rusty? Ranieri leafed back through his memory, to Sardinia, the start of his managerial career. “When I arrived at Cagliari, I won Serie C, then won Serie B. Then I had to stay up in Serie A and by the end of the first half of the season, we were nine points adrift and bottom. People said, ‘Okay, Cagliari are down’. I said to my players, ‘We’ll continue to fight’. In the end, we stayed up with a game to spare. When I came here, a lot of people said, ‘Try and make the same recovery in the second half of this season’.”
Initially, having been a big shot helped. “When you’ve managed great champions and you arrive at a smaller team, players believe in you. When I tell someone, ‘You, you’re a good player’, they believe in me. Slowly, they start to recharge that very important component: self-belief. We started scoring towards the end of games. And of course the results help.” Like three wins from his past three matches. Parma stood 13th going into this weekend and a victory today against Chievo, who are 18th and three points behind Parma, should go a long way to confirming survival. It is some recovery: In 12 games, Parma under Ranieri are 20 points better off.
Parma now have goals in them, too, and for that, much gratitude to teenager Giuseppe Rossi, hired on loan from Manchester United just before Ranieri arrived, after a frustrating six months mostly on the bench at Newcastle.
Rossi has scored almost a goal every two outings. His temporary manager is “very happy with him. He sees the goal, he smells the goal,” says Ranieri, “and he has an English spirit. When we lose the ball, he’ll press the defender and that’s very stimulating for his teammates. He’s only 20 and he’s a good man. He wants to improve, and it’s not been easy to come here.”
Does Ranieri miss that English spirit? He has many friends at Chelsea still and will not judge his former club, except to say of their current manager that too much boasting might be counterproductive: “Jose Mourinho is a great manager, but it’s impossible to say, at the beginning, ‘I will win a lot of titles here’. And they have wanted to win the Champions League since Roman Abramovich came.” Ranieri himself would like to be in the Champions League again. Long term, Parma would need to convince him “of their project”.
There are those in the Premiership - Fulham for one have made an interest known - who would like Ranieri back. “Why not?” he says, “England was amazing for me, for my wife, my family. We had a nice life. I’ve kept my house in London. I like English football. I like English people. I even like English food.” Steady. Surely he couldn’t be serious? He was serious.
“Listen. It’s true. Simpsons on the Strand? And now listen carefully. Sometimes me and my wife go up to Newark, near Lincoln, where they have a fair, the best sausages in the north.” Ranieri’s features crease into a smile, his eyebrows lift. He’s enjoying being a manager again. “I was bored without it,” he says, “I love being out on the green fields.” Parma’s yellow-and-blues should be okay.
Princes of Parma: how the veteran manager and a Premiership reserve revived Parma
Parma pre-Ranieri 19th in Serie A, with 15 points from 22 games. 0.68 pts per game.
Parma with Ranieri 13th in Serie A with 35 points from 34 games. 1.67 pts per game.
- Claudio Ranieri joined Napoli in 1991, guiding them to fourth place in Serie A. Moved to Fiorentina, winning the Coppa Italia and Italian SuperCup in 1996
- He joined Valencia, guiding them to a Champions League place and the Copa del Rey in 1997 before a fateful season at Atletico Madrid, during which Ranieri quit with the club on the brink of relegation
- Next came four years at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea finished sixth in his first season but lost the FA Cup final to Arsenal. The following season they qualified for the Champions League.Then came Roman Abramovich
- Ranieri spent £120m on players in the summer of 2003. Chelsea finished second and reached the Champions League semifinals, but Ranieri was sacked. He returned to Valencia in June 2004, but was sacked months later
- In February he took over at Parma, reviving the club with the help of seven goals from Giuseppe Rossi. Ranieri’s contract expires at the end of the season, and he’s now linked with Fulham
Giuseppe Rossi
- at Newcastle (Aug 06-Jan 07): 11 games, 3 starts; 0 goals.
- at Parma (Jan 07 -): 15 games, 15 starts; 7 goals
- Giuseppe Rossi, now 20, was born and raised in New Jersey. His parents were Italian immigrants
- Offered a place in Parma’s youth team before being signed by Manchester United aged 16. Represented Italy up to under-21 level. Milan, Inter, Juventus and Roma have all shown an interest, but Sir Alex Ferguson insists Rossi will be returning to Old Trafford
By Ian Hawkey
When Claudio Ranieri took over Parma they looked doomed, yet today they could stay in Serie A against all the odds
Yellow: not the fashionable colour to be wearing in Europe this spring. In France, the canaries of Nantes look relegated from the top flight for the first time since anybody can remember. In England, Watford already are. Germany’s Borussia Dortmund, Champions League winners a decade ago, flirted perilously in their fluorescent jerseys with an exit from the Bundesliga. And for most of the past nine months, Italy’s Parma were as good as tying bright yellow and blue ribbons around the gateposts to Serie B.
By the end of this afternoon, Parma might have moved a step closer to staying in Serie A, thanks to the man presenting himself on a sunny afternoon at the club’s practice ground. He wears a close-fitting training top, with a bright yellow cross on what we might be allowed to call a Chelsea-blue background, hugging a figure most 45-year-olds would envy.
Fifty-five-year-old Claudio Ranieri appears no greyer, no older than 27 months ago when he last managed a football club. He reports that he did “nothing” in his period on redundancy pay, but he kept in shape.
Ranieri, sacked as Valencia manager in February 2005, eight months after being replaced by Chelsea who he had taken to the semi-finals of the Champions League and second in the Premiership - yes, he’s aware of the echoes - was “bored”. So when his phone rang in February this year with an offer to coach again in Serie A, he wanted it. Ranieri was never by nature yellow, never cowardly. If he had a caricature, it was for being too bold, at least in his team changes, the Tinkerman of Stamford Bridge.
Saving Parma was a tall order. Twelve games ago, when he stepped into the job vacated by Stefano Pioli, they were 19th in the table with a mere 15 points. Morale had slumped, the photos on the training ground walls no longer generated corporate pride, they accused the current players. The posters show the Uefa Cup winners of 1995 and 1999, reminders of an era in which the city of Parma was nearly as celebrated for its team as for producing the world’s greatest gratable cheese and a delicious cured ham.
“Look at those pictures,” Ranieri urges. We fill in the names: Fabio Cannavaro in yellow-and-blue hoops, Lilian Thuram alongside him. Gianfranco Zola spent some of his best years here; ditto Gianluigi Buffon, Hernan Crespo and Juan Sebastian Veron.
You could go on. Ranieri mentioned the Milan striker Alberto Gilardino, one of Serie A’s hottest shots two seasons ago, to show Parma’s reputation for nurturing excellence was not just a history now yellowing around the edges.
A little like Dortmund in Germany and a lot like several clubs in Italy, Parma’s plight is a cautionary tale about big business’s relationship with football and the rapid cycle of boom and bust. For a period in the mid-to-late 1990s, when the Italian game had global preeminence, big multinationals were backing Serie A clubs with a enthusiasm akin to the shine American money now takes to the Premiership.
Ranieri remembers the frisson. Calcio seemed no longer the domain of the big three, Juventus, Milan and Internazionale. “There was Parma, there was Lazio. And remember Roma spent a lot of money to win the scudetto in 2001. But now there isn’t the money of 10 years ago. A lot of the money is in England and Spain and the clubs there are spending. The champion players don’t go to Italy now, they want to go to Chelsea, United, Real Madrid, Barcelona and maybe some still to Milan and Inter. But you’ve seen with Roma, how the money supply closes and they can still start again, and are doing well. Look at Lazio – fourth in Serie A – even after Cragnotti [the magnate who led them to near-bankruptcy].”
And Parma? They boomed with the financial backing of the dairy giant Parmalat, and suffered when the company cut back in crisis. “We had been three years under administration,” Ranieri points out. “Of course we can’t be Milan or Inter. We can be like Sampdoria or Udinese. We can’t get to where we were 10 years ago, because money is important. A team with a lot of money can get away with making mistakes.”
Ten weeks ago, Parma had no margin for error. Ranieri signed his contract, to the end of the season, and his first three matches in charge, a Serie A game against Sampdoria and two legs of a Uefa Cup defeat against Sporting Braga of Portugal, ended in 1-0 losses. He needed a rousing speech to the dressing-room. It went like this: “Okay, now it’s 12 midnight, sooner or later it will be one o’clock. It looks dark. Then it will be two o’clock and slowly, slowly we’ll see the light. And, remember, if I came here, it is because I believe it’s possible.”
It had been a long time since Ranieri was required to play rescuer. His previous appointment had been to take over the Spanish champions, Valencia, in 2004. Before that, he had been at Chelsea. Might the skills needed for a relegation spat have turned rusty? Ranieri leafed back through his memory, to Sardinia, the start of his managerial career. “When I arrived at Cagliari, I won Serie C, then won Serie B. Then I had to stay up in Serie A and by the end of the first half of the season, we were nine points adrift and bottom. People said, ‘Okay, Cagliari are down’. I said to my players, ‘We’ll continue to fight’. In the end, we stayed up with a game to spare. When I came here, a lot of people said, ‘Try and make the same recovery in the second half of this season’.”
Initially, having been a big shot helped. “When you’ve managed great champions and you arrive at a smaller team, players believe in you. When I tell someone, ‘You, you’re a good player’, they believe in me. Slowly, they start to recharge that very important component: self-belief. We started scoring towards the end of games. And of course the results help.” Like three wins from his past three matches. Parma stood 13th going into this weekend and a victory today against Chievo, who are 18th and three points behind Parma, should go a long way to confirming survival. It is some recovery: In 12 games, Parma under Ranieri are 20 points better off.
Parma now have goals in them, too, and for that, much gratitude to teenager Giuseppe Rossi, hired on loan from Manchester United just before Ranieri arrived, after a frustrating six months mostly on the bench at Newcastle.
Rossi has scored almost a goal every two outings. His temporary manager is “very happy with him. He sees the goal, he smells the goal,” says Ranieri, “and he has an English spirit. When we lose the ball, he’ll press the defender and that’s very stimulating for his teammates. He’s only 20 and he’s a good man. He wants to improve, and it’s not been easy to come here.”
Does Ranieri miss that English spirit? He has many friends at Chelsea still and will not judge his former club, except to say of their current manager that too much boasting might be counterproductive: “Jose Mourinho is a great manager, but it’s impossible to say, at the beginning, ‘I will win a lot of titles here’. And they have wanted to win the Champions League since Roman Abramovich came.” Ranieri himself would like to be in the Champions League again. Long term, Parma would need to convince him “of their project”.
There are those in the Premiership - Fulham for one have made an interest known - who would like Ranieri back. “Why not?” he says, “England was amazing for me, for my wife, my family. We had a nice life. I’ve kept my house in London. I like English football. I like English people. I even like English food.” Steady. Surely he couldn’t be serious? He was serious.
“Listen. It’s true. Simpsons on the Strand? And now listen carefully. Sometimes me and my wife go up to Newark, near Lincoln, where they have a fair, the best sausages in the north.” Ranieri’s features crease into a smile, his eyebrows lift. He’s enjoying being a manager again. “I was bored without it,” he says, “I love being out on the green fields.” Parma’s yellow-and-blues should be okay.
Princes of Parma: how the veteran manager and a Premiership reserve revived Parma
Parma pre-Ranieri 19th in Serie A, with 15 points from 22 games. 0.68 pts per game.
Parma with Ranieri 13th in Serie A with 35 points from 34 games. 1.67 pts per game.
- Claudio Ranieri joined Napoli in 1991, guiding them to fourth place in Serie A. Moved to Fiorentina, winning the Coppa Italia and Italian SuperCup in 1996
- He joined Valencia, guiding them to a Champions League place and the Copa del Rey in 1997 before a fateful season at Atletico Madrid, during which Ranieri quit with the club on the brink of relegation
- Next came four years at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea finished sixth in his first season but lost the FA Cup final to Arsenal. The following season they qualified for the Champions League.Then came Roman Abramovich
- Ranieri spent £120m on players in the summer of 2003. Chelsea finished second and reached the Champions League semifinals, but Ranieri was sacked. He returned to Valencia in June 2004, but was sacked months later
- In February he took over at Parma, reviving the club with the help of seven goals from Giuseppe Rossi. Ranieri’s contract expires at the end of the season, and he’s now linked with Fulham
Giuseppe Rossi
- at Newcastle (Aug 06-Jan 07): 11 games, 3 starts; 0 goals.
- at Parma (Jan 07 -): 15 games, 15 starts; 7 goals
- Giuseppe Rossi, now 20, was born and raised in New Jersey. His parents were Italian immigrants
- Offered a place in Parma’s youth team before being signed by Manchester United aged 16. Represented Italy up to under-21 level. Milan, Inter, Juventus and Roma have all shown an interest, but Sir Alex Ferguson insists Rossi will be returning to Old Trafford
By Ian Hawkey
what i dont like about the article is the major gratitude to Rossi, who although had a great impact but there are others who lifted and it was a team effort that made the difference after Ranieri's arrival.
Players like Couto in defense, Dessena and Gassbarroni(whos been great on this 2nd half of the season) and Budan upfront.
They were denied by the writer when they should've been up there with Rossi.
Players like Couto in defense, Dessena and Gassbarroni(whos been great on this 2nd half of the season) and Budan upfront.
They were denied by the writer when they should've been up there with Rossi.
Empoli - Catania 2-0
to Milan. They could have been leading 2-0 by now. Forza Frey! 