AC Milan general spiel 2.0

[RomaShield27]

http://football-italia.net/blogs/jdt1.html

Read the comments below, people tearing into this blog.

[RomaShield27]

Milan are getting torn apart in the english media. I can't say I agree with it all.


http://www.guardian.co.uk – Wednesday 16 February 2011

Tottenham Hotspur exact calm retribution on an inglorious, spiteful and ultimately disgraceful Milan side

Joe Jordan played for Milan from 1981 to 1983 and scored 12 goals in 52 appearances but he can never have expected the sort of reception that awaited him on his return to San Siro, when he was assaulted after the final whistle by Gennaro Gattuso, the home team's captain, whose paroxysm of violence brought disgrace to a club that counts itself among Europe's footballing aristocracy.

As the final whistle blew on Tottenham Hotspur's 1-0 victory, the ever-combustible Gattuso shook hands with Harry Redknapp but then went to war with Jordan, Sébastien Bassong and seemingly every other member of the visitors' bench to whom he could get close.

Gattuso was shepherded away by his team-mate Mathieu Flamini but both men were lucky to be on the pitch as the match ended. Flamini's flying two-footed lunge had removed Vedran Corluka from the contest after 55 minutes and might have ended the Croat defender's career. Gattuso's vicious tackle on Steven Pienaar 20 minutes later was not much better. Both perpetrators were merely cautioned by the French referee, Stéphane Lannoy.

Knowing that his yellow card meant that he would miss the second leg of the tie in two weeks' time, Gattuso beat the ground with rage. Whatever may have provoked him to chase after Bassong and apparently butt Jordan, Redknapp's first-team coach, as they went into the tunnel, he deserves further punishment for a disgraceful episode.

This was a long way from the Milan of Gianni Rivera and Marco van Basten but the day had started well. A few hours earlier the club's owner, Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, learnt that he will face trial on charges of sexual misconduct in April. Last night the leader of his Rossoneri could be found attempting to start a gutter fight.

Nor was this the Milan of Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini, those supreme defenders, as could be seen when Spurs scored 10 minutes from time. Aaron Lennon left Mario Yepes on the seat of his pants as he raced down the inside-right channel and into the Milan penalty area before squaring the ball for Peter Crouch, unhindered by the once immaculate Alessandro Nesta, to sidefoot the ball past Marco Amelia, Milan's replacement goalkeeper.

Have-a-go Harry had intimated that Spurs would play their natural game on their return to the great cathedral of Italian football, holding out the promise of another bare-knuckle ride to match October's meeting with Internazionale, San Siro's co-tenants, in which Redknapp's team went four goals down before Gareth Bale hit back with a hat-trick that sent his name echoing around the football salons of Europe.

There was no Bale this time, regrettably, but the north London team began as though anxious to prove their manager as good as his word. Redknapp's attacking formation took the initiative from Massimiliano Allegri's less adventurous line-up, in which Clarence Seedorf was supporting Robinho and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Pienaar and Rafael van der Vaart created incisive combinations on the left, while Lennon and Corluka on the right gave Luca Antonini a persistent headache in the early stages as they sent over a series of crosses which Christian Abbiati was forced to claw away from Crouch's head.

With only 16 minutes gone the beleaguered Abbiati was removed from the contest after a collision with Crouch. Replays were unable to reveal anything untoward but the seeds of Gattuso's later outburst may have been sown in a perceived injustice at that point.

Even after spending the past three months at the top of Serie A, Allegri's Milan clearly cannot be spoken of in the same terms as their illustrious predecessors. Deprived in this game of the silky playmaking of Andrea Pirlo, they looked short of authority and rhythm and Seedorf, the great veteran, was harried to distraction by Wilson Palacios, one of Spurs' two muscular midfield destroyers.

Unsurprisingly Allegri sent on Pato after the interval in place of Seedorf, who had been outrun and outfought in his attempts to feed the two strikers. Robinho dropped back into the space he had vacated, while the younger Brazilian joined Ibrahimovic in the front line. They began the second period as though the management had fed them some of Berlusconi's blue pills instead of a team talk, creating several chances as the Tottenham defence went into siege mode, lead by the outstanding Michael Dawson and with William Gallas producing a vital scissor-kick clearance off the line from Yepes's header.

The game's coherence had by now largely dissolved in the acid of anger and aggression, with Milan committing large numbers to frenzied attack. Abate's incursions were dismantling the left side of the visitors' defence with a legitimacy that was not present in Gattuso's flagrant attempts to provoke Crouch, including a hand flicked towards the striker's face and withdrawn at the last second. But it was Tottenham who exploited the disintegration of the match, Lennon's lightning-fast break and cool square pass giving Crouch the chance to inflict hurtful retribution.

[vtec]

i can't say i disagree with it. the players (especially gattuso, ibrahimovic), allegri, and galliani, should all hold their heads in shame

[maro]

One thing I will say about the Rhino is that for all that he's an ejit, when he does cock up he generally comes out and says so openly and honestly. He's an ejit on the field, certainly, but there is a certain strange integrity to his ejicy.

[p_maldini_3]

it was disappointing to see what gattuso did. but it's also a shame to see the hypocrisy in the media, when The Bald Algerian headbutted materazzi everybody blamed materazzi for instigating it. yesterday, joe jordan calls gattuso a 'fucking italian bastard' and he expects to get away with the xenophobia. gattuso was an idiot, but he does admit his mistakes like a real man.

allegri needs to smell and wake up the coffee, serie A tactics won't work in europe.

[maro]

I'm not sure "Fucking Italian Bastard" is really so xenophobic, mk. I mean, he is Italian and he is a 'bastard' in the usual, careless sense of that word, no?

[juventino_italiano]

[p_maldini_3]

i hope napoli don't sell their stars if they make the champions league, they've got the energy to play in the top levels of european football.

maro, as gattuso's agent said, for somebody who is proud to be italian like gattuso, it's an undignified insult of the lowest level. the rest is history.

but still, i think gattuso shamed the rossoneri yesterday, he doesn't deserve to wear the armband anymore. give it to nesta.

[maro]

Of course his agent said that. It's a load of bull to my mind. If someone called me a fucking Kiwi I'd say, yeah, well observed.

[RomaShield27]

I think there is more to what Joe Jordan said than just 'fucking italian bastard'. Gattuso said he won't reveal all of what was said. I heard that Jordan insulted Gattuso's wife, who is from Glasgow and affiliated with Rangers, where Gattuso met her, and so Jordan targeted this given his Celtic connections in the past. Nothing can excuse Gattuso's behaviour and he was bang out of order, no doubt, but the way he has been lambasted and criticised in the english media is way over the top, as per usual.

[vtec]

anyone trying to excuse gattuso's headbutt is no different than bald-algerian apologists who were trying to excuse The Bald Algerian's headbutt with claims that materazzi said something despicable, all of which were unsubstantiated speculations.

[maro]

mk, I posted this in the sb earlier but it's disappeared. I don't know if it's of much interest or use. sp, delete or move this post as you like in due course.

* Delete post

There's probably a sense in which all you need is something which gives you a bit of confidence in cooking some staples and it would have to be a pretty remarkably crap cookbook not to do that for you.

maro
Thu Feb 17, 2011 8:18 pm

* Delete post

Jamie Oliver has a new simple-meals type of cookbook out at the moment which I suspect is okay. Probably it doesn't matter what you get at this point - the idea would simply be to get anything with a few recipes you like the look of and then you can work on from there, trying variations of one kind or another, eventually looking at how others cook the same dishes in different ways.

maro
Thu Feb 17, 2011 8:16 pm

* Delete post

The Larousse Gastronomique and the Silver Spoon are quite impressive in their particular ways - but they're possibly a bit 'serious'. We've quite enjoyed cooking some Nigel Slater recipes and he has one book we like because it follows the seasonal availability of stuff.

maro
Thu Feb 17, 2011 8:15 pm

* Delete post

I'm not sure, mk. I just asked Alvira and her response was the same as mine, really - you're best off deciding on a qwizzine and buying a buke for that kind of food. I grew up doing a bit of cooking with my mum so I've never really used an 'intro to cooking' kind of cookbook (just recipes from her).

maro
Thu Feb 17, 2011 8:13 pm

[p_maldini_3]

thanks for following up tom, i did miss your responses to my query as i had to run, but your input is much appreciated.

[San Paolo]

http://www.milannews.it/?action=read&idnotizia=45817

[San Paolo]

Serie A leaders Milan left the San Siro on Tuesday evening following their 1-0 Champions League defeat to Tottenham Hotspur under a barrage of criticism. A number of unsavoury incidents during the encounter drew the attention away from the more important events of the night.

The North London outfit returned home with an impressive away victory but all eyes post game turned to Gennaro Gattuso’s headbutt on Joe Jordan. With Mathieu Flamini’s brainless challenge on Vedran Corluka providing fuel for the fire shortly before the hour mark, a number of critics were waiting with knives at the ready as they prepared to tear into the Diavolo.

There is no denying that Ringhio’s behaviour was nothing short of crazy. His actions have no place in the modern game regardless of reports of alleged racism from the touchline. Whilst some searched for excuses to defend France legend Zinedine The Bald Algerian after his infamous headbutt on Marco Materazzi during the 2006 World Cup final, there were no alibis either for Gattuso.

In the same light, Flamini’s tackle on Corluka was nothing short of disgraceful – a red card offense. The Frenchman’s two footed challenge was certainly reckless but to claim it was deliberate serves as little if not to make a public enemy figure of the former Arsenal midfielder.

The media onslaught shortly followed and The Daily Mail’s Martin Samuel called for Flamini to be awarded a ten game ban. Is the same measure of judgement used when analysing the far more common EPL leg breaking challenges? Such as Ryan Shawcross' on Aaron Ramsey last year, which was generally passed off as an "accident", "these things happen".

As Graeme Souness went on to blast Gattuso labelling the 31-year-old ‘a dog’ on SkySports in the post match analysis, the former Liverfekkin'wankscum midfielder then did his best to instigate further tensions by suggesting Gattuso and Jordan should ‘be left in a room together for ten minutes, with the Scot only needing five'. However tough Jordan was in his youth - and he was very very tough - are Souness and the media really that brainless to believe that a 60-year-old could 'beat up' another hardman half his age in his physical prime?

The Daily Mail echoed Souness’ rather unsavoury tones on Wednesday with the typically stereotypical title ‘How the mafiosi of Milan have made Spurs fans of us all’. What the press failed to remember in their treatment of the Rossoneri is that Gattuso went on to publicly apologise after his gesture. Such an action has still not been made by The Bald Algerian five years on from his moment of madness, yet a similar lambasting was conveniently spared for the Frenchman in the tabloid press - many of whom (including The Daily Mail) were then successfully sued by Materazzi after they defamed the Inter man by claiming he had been racist.

What must be underlined is that Milan have a very clean track record when it comes to such incidents over the last 20 years. An exception being the Marseille floodlight scandal in 1991. During the era of Silvio Berlusconi as patron of the club, the Rossoneri have rarely been marred in any public outrages or dressing room bust-ups. Despite their nickname, the Diavolo has been exceptionally behaved. Terms such as ‘Milanimals’ and ‘mafiosi’ demonstrated a huge lack of knowledge, and respect for a player who has done great things for those less privileged than him with his ‘Fondazione Forza Ragazzi’.

[p_maldini_3]

pato pulled a pato, and van bommel was man of the match.

[romawi]

What does it mean to "pull a pato"?

[p_maldini_3]

pull a pato - v. to manifest an act of sublime brilliance with the ball to facilitate the jizzing in the pants of the spectators.

[San Paolo]

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to Silvio Berlusconi who’s celebrating 25 years in helm of Milan today!

20 of February 1986 was an important day in the history of Associazione Calcio Milan – it was the day in which Silvio Berlusconi bought the club.

The 74th richest man in the world turned this club to legendary, with non-stopping investments and love as well as dedication and commitment, Berlusconi made Milan the best club in the world.

This colorful man uses to say that he’s the most successful President in the world of the most successful club – and he doesn’t lie. Berlusconi is indeed the greatest president football has seen.

Berlusconi brought to the club great names like the Dutch trio Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard, Andrei Shevchenko, Ricky Kaka, Andrea Pirlo, Gennaro Gattuso while players like Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini were the captains.

The most beautiful time in this club’s history took place in the Berlusconi era, which will probably continue also after Silvio leaves, and check out the best part of the story – it is not over yet!

[San Paolo]

Lonely Ducky!

Alexandre Pato voluntarily turned up for training on Tuesday even though Milan had been given the day off by Massimiliano Allegri.

The 21-year-old Brazil international spent an hour and a half working on his game in an effort to convince the coaching staff to start him more regularly.

Pato has been on the bench 10 times this season despite scoring a goal every 96 minutes in Serie A.

He got the winner against Chievo at the weekend and is trying to develop a better understanding with Zlatan Ibrahimovic.