THE WOLF'S DEN - Tana dei Lupi II

[DCGweez]

Ed, I agree, i was being a bit tongue and cheek there. Balza is a better player but I have thought to myself numerous times lately that there is nothing exception about him but his work rate.

We paid 5 million for the guy and i'm not sure it was money well spent. Especially when you see Marcos (I'm just gonna call him that from now on) who's 13 years younger, playing better and will cost us half that amount.

[RomaShield27]

I think €5m for him was good business. Only a couple of months ago a good few of us (myself, Colly) were saying he was our best buy of summer mercato. He started well for us, showed what he can do, and it looked liked our left full-back problems were solved. We have to give him the benefit that he's just going through a rough patch, I'm sure he'll be back to his best soon.

Marcos looks like the real deal. I remember when we first signed him and he (or maybe his agent) said he's delighted to be joining Roma and was told by Zeman he can slot right into the first team and be ready for that early game against Inter. I thought, yeh ok, go on, thats just confident talk from a young lad, there's no way he'll be able to settle into a new league, new country, new surroundings etc. at just 18-years of age. But feck has he done well. €3m for him looks like a steal.

--------------

http://www.corrieredellosport.it/foto/c ... r+la+Lazio

Corriere dello Sport doing a picture special on Gazza as Lazio welcome Spurs on Thursday (so Colly, avoid the Olimpico and area like the plague). Heres an interesting pic of him with Zeman (found the original on Getty, its from April 1995, Coppa semi-final v Juve in Turin):

[Lupa]

I was happy with the Balzaretti buy too. A member of the Azzurri? Yes, thankyouverymuch.

[DCGweez]

If he can find last years form and keep it going 3 more years then he'll be a good buy i suppose.

If not, then it's 5 mill that could of been better spent on a youngster. Although Cote didn't work out so well.

[RomaShield27]

TOTTI REACHES 550 APPEARANCES WITH THE NUMBER 10 SHIRT AGAINST TORINO!
/ 11/20/2012

Rome, 14 September 1997. A classic of Italian football was scheduled at the Stadio Olimpico: Roma v Juventus. Taking to the pitch in the Giallorossi shirt was a strapping blond youth nearly twenty years old who hailed from the San Giovanni neighbourhood in Rome. He was a pure talent that had emerged from the youth academy in Trigoria, the likes of which had not been seen in years, and such a prodigy that his Serie A debut came at only at sixteen and a half years of age, thanks to Vujadin Boskov, in Brescia v Roma in 1993.

The Serbian coach was the first that he would encounter on his path. In the following years he would find in Carlo Mazzone a father figure more than a coach, and someone to look after him and shelter him from the excessive attention of the press. Things did not go so smoothly with Carlos Bianchi however. During his tenure in the capital the Argentine coach, who in his country had racked up trophies by the dozen, endorsed a transfer on loan to Sampdoria in order to receive Ajax’s Finnish attacker Jari Litmanen in exchange.

Then arrived the “Città di Roma” tournament in which the blond lad – who had one foot practically out the door – put on a true world-class performance that was enough to convince president Sensi to tear up the transfer agreement and shelve the Litmanen idea. Instead, Carlos Bianchi was the one to leave Rome, and the following year – 1997/98 – Zdenek Zeman took his place on the bench and confided in the Roman youngster as he took the club back to top levels again after the “Carlitos” era.

The Czech relied on him, as did his team-mates and veterans such as Di Biagio and Delvecchio who, during the pre-season training camp in Kapfenberg, Austria, would reward Totti with the number 10 shirt that only two years earlier had been worn by his idol, Giuseppe Giannini. Zeman left the assigning of numbers to his players, but when informed of this decision he nodded in approval and stated, "Well done. It’s the right decision. The number 10 will stimulate him and make him considerably more aware of his responsibilities." Totti had worn the number 17 during his season with Bianchi and the number 20 in previous years, "because it brings me good luck". The number 10, however, is something different. Maradona, Pelé, Baggio, Platini. In a word: it is football.

The season began with a chance for redemption and the first match was played in Florence against an Empoli side led by debutant Serie A coach Luciano Spalletti. Totti did not take to the pitch, but Roma comfortably won the match. His debut as the number 10 was only postponed to the following home game, against Marcello Lippi’s Juventus. After ninety minutes the match ended 0-0, but the performance of the young talent was superb and many fans already saw in him a champion to be worshipped.

The first goal wearing the number 10 came the following week against Lecce, again at the Olimpico. From that moment the youngster began his dizzying climb, goal after goal, match after match, year after year. In 2001 he was the captain and number ten of the championship winning Roma side. But he did not stop there. The boy became a man and gradually established himself as the most important player in the history of the club for both goals and appearances.

Yesterday against Torino he set yet another record: 550 competitive appearances – between the league (428) and various cup competitions (122) – as the number ten. 550, but when adding up the numbers the result is always the same: 10. Francesco Totti.

Tiziano Riccardi

[Lupa]

I'm actually happy with the idea of buying some proven players combined with youngsters. I'll admit to being biased on this one -- if he weren't Italian, I might feel different about it.

[Italiamia]

[maro]

Osvaldo's a pretty good player too, I'd say. Destro looks to me good both sides of the ball - he's certainly a much more gifted player than Borini (or than Borini's ever seemed to me). How many points would we have if Zeman weren't such a stubborn ass and had built his tactics around DDR as regista and Pjanic as mezz'ala? More than we do, I'd say. Pjanic didn't really play like a Zeman mezz'ala yesterday but if Zeman can't get the best out of players of that quality then he should be shot in the ass.

[maro]

[RomaShield27]

| Pitchside Europe – 39 minutes ago

French philosophy, in particular the work of Rene Descartes, is unlikely to have had any great appeal to the Roma legend Rodolfo Volk.

"I think therefore I am" isn't how he approached football. "I don't think," he said. "I shoot." And Volk rarely missed, scoring 103 goals in 157 games for the club. He was one of the great strikers of the Fascist era in Italy and joined Roma soon after their formation in 1927. 'Sciabbolone' as Volk became known or 'the Big Sabre' was one of the club's pioneers. Left foot. Right foot. He slashed away as Roma broke new ground.

Volk scored the first goal at Roma's first home, Campo Testaccio. He scored the first derby goal ever against Lazio too and in 1931 became the first Roma player to finish Capocannoniere in Serie A. Is it any wonder his name, distorted as 'Vorche', a 'magician at scoring' is still sung to this day at the Stadio Olimpico as the ultras lend their voices to the popular old Campo Testaccio song? Volk scored 29 goals in that 1930-31 season and it included a club record run of finding the back of the net seven games in a row.

His name has been back in the headlines in the past week or so. Why? Because after more than 80 years Volk's record has come under serious threat. Erik Lamela went into Monday night's game against Torino at the Olimpico having found the net in each of his last six appearances for Roma. No one had come as close to matching Volk before. His great rival, Enrique Guaita, remembered as the Black Pirate, struck on five successive occasions in the early '30s. So too, much later, did Abel Balbo and Francesco Totti.

Would Lamela manage to go where no Roma player other than Volk had gone before?

Unfortunately, he fell just short. Roma overcame Torino 2-0. They did so, however, not through Lamela, but with a controversial penalty from Pablo Daniel Osvaldo and a wildly deflected shot from Miralem Pjanic. That his streak was brought to an end should not detract from the progress he has made as a player this season. Lamela has come on leaps and bounds particularly in the consistency of his performances.

Signed from River Plate over a year ago following the trauma of their first ever relegation, a lot was expected of him. Much of that was down to the fee - thought to be €12m, rising to €20m - and the hype that accompanied it. Roma supporters had heard so much about Lamela. They learned how Barcelona had approached his father and requested that he join La Masia after an impressive showing at a youth tournament in Spain where he scored five goals in a single game. Lamela was 12 at the time. He could have followed in the footsteps of Lionel Messi. He instead chose to remain in Argentina because he didn't feel ready to leave.

"I was too little to experience what I am experiencing now," Lamela recalled. "It was complicated. So I stayed with River's kids and my father stayed in the family bakery... I'd finish playing football and run inside to see him. He didn't want me to put my hands in the flour. He said it was dangerous. The bakery is full of machines."

It called to mind the childhood of a Roma all-time great, a member of their first ever Scudetto-winning side in 1941, Amadeo Amadei, a local boy and fans' favourite, who everyone referred to as "Er Fornaretto", the little baker or baker's son, who, as a boy, used to deliver bread on his bicycle. The portents, it seemed, were good. Everything appeared to indicate that Lamela was destined for great things.

But an ankle injury meant he missed the beginning of last season. Roma fans had to wait until late October to see Lamela make his first competitive appearance in the giallorosso shirt. He didn't disappoint. With a wonderfully curling shot from outside the box, Lamela opened his account at home to Palermo just seven minutes into his Roma career. In doing so, he joined Pedro Manfredini, Pierino Prati and Roberto Pruzzo in a remarkably small club of players to score on their competitive debut for Roma. "He could be my heir," said Francesco Totti.

For the remainder of the campaign, however, Lamela flickered. There were flashpoints too. He clashed with Osvaldo after Roma's 2-0 defeat to Udinese amid reports that Lamela had turned to his teammate in the dressing room and sniffed: "You're not Maradona."

Both denied that anything of the sort had been said. But Lamela had by then got an unfair reputation as a bit of an upstart. He courted controversy again later in the season when he spat [or at least pretended to] at Stephane Lichtsteiner in Roma's 4-0 defeat to Juventus and received a three-match ban after the incident was caught on camera and reviewed by the disciplinary commission.

Questions were asked of Lamela after his first season at Roma. Some even considered him to be a flop. It was ludicrous to expect so much from a player who only turned 20 in March. But then this is Rome. Walter Sabatini, the Roma director of sport who brought Javier Pastore to Palermo, said: "If Lamela doesn't turn into a champion it'll mean that I'm a donkey and I'll have to get a new job." Thankfully for him, it seems, that won't be necessary for Lamela is now realising his vast potential.

He particularly caught the eye in pre-season.

When Roma's players weren't jogging up and down steps, a session known as the 'Gradoni', which has become the trademark of coach Zdenek Zeman down the years, they were instead doing nine intervals of 1,000m runs with a rest of 2:30 in between each one.

Lamela was the fastest throughout, not to mention the only player in the squad to finish the final interval under three minutes. Fellow South American Nico Lopez came in second. "[Lamela] has a lot of running in his legs. He could run for three hours," Zeman would later claim. Maybe it was tough love, but at the time he wasn't overly impressed.

Bojan and Fabio Borini, then still at the club, looked the likelier to thrive under Zeman. Once they left, the £10m Roma spent acquiring young striker Mattia Destro, the most coveted player of the summer in Italy, indicated that he'd be the one to play with Totti and Osvaldo up front. That impression was only reinforced when Zeman complained: "Lamela and Lopez are more or less at the same level in the sense that both have understood little about what I want from them."

Since then, however, Lamela's comprehension of how Zeman thinks football should be played is as good as any of his teammates. No one, except maybe Alessandro Florenzi, the 21-year-old recently capped by Italy, and Totti and Osvaldo, who have previously worked under Zeman, has got it quicker.

"For me, it's a completely new way of playing on the pitch," Lamela told Il Corriere dello Sport. "At River I was used to waiting for the ball to come to me. The play went through my feet. At Roma it's different. I have always been a trequartista. But the trequartista doesn't exist in a 4-3-3, so I go wherever the coach wants."

That has been out wide in attack and it's reminiscent of how Zeman treated Totti during his first spell in charge of Roma between 1997 and 1999. Totti had always played as a No.10 behind the strikers and contributed in assists rather than in goals. Zeman then moved him out left, apparently out of position, and out of the blue, he found the net 14 then 16 times in two seasons. "For Zeman," Roma legend Giuseppe Giannini insisted, "Lamela can be the Totti of 13 years ago." The young Argentine is certainly studying his captain.

"Totti changed the way he played over the years," Lamela acknowledged. "He knows how to do everything either as a classic No. 10 or as a No. 9. He became a great goalscorer."

Maybe that's the trajectory Lamela will follow. Roma won't be able to replace Totti. It's impossible. He's their greatest player ever and represents so much more than a footballer. But in Lamela, they have a more than capable junior, an exceptional talent who may yet leave a mark on the club like Volk and Amadei did in the years before him.

[Bagg10]

Tuesday November 20 2012

Cagliari-Roma result confirmed
By Football Italia staff

The FIGC has rejected Cagliari’s appeal against the 3-0 result awarded to Roma after authorities called off the match.

This Serie A game was scrapped just hours before kick-off when Cagliari President Massimo Cellino urged fans to attend the Is Arenas match, despite the local authorities ruling it be played behind closed doors due to failed security checks.

The tie was called off amid fears for public safety and the blame pinned on Cellino, so a 3-0 result was awarded to Roma.

“I was hoping for a little justice,” said Cellino at the FIGC headquarters in Rome.

“We confirmed our reasons and just want respect for the rules,” insisted Roma director Claudio Fenucci.

“We were in Cagliari to play football, but it could not go ahead for the reasons we all know. Sport is won by applying the rules.”

http://www.football-italia.net/27514/ca ... -confirmed

[RomaShield27]

Cellino is a fucking idiot. Its clowns like him who hold calcio back in the dark ages, he's lucky Cagliari didn't get a point deduction, not to mention a bulldozer through their shitty Fisher Price cardboard stadio.

[DCGweez]

He tried a power play and it back fired. Then he tried to blame everyone but himself. The city council won't do what you want? Throw a fit. Roma won't do what you want? Throw a fit. The FIGC won't do what you want? Throw a fit.

Everyone is sick of his ish.

[red]

[RomaShield27]

Ha, perhaps, Red, although our away form this season has probably been better than our home form. Plus that game would have been 'closed doors' so no intimidating atmosphere. There was also talk of Cagliari getting an actual point reduction on top of a loss being awarded to them.

[maro]

[maro]

[RomaShield27]

[Italiamia]

Lamela out for 3 weeks:


http://it.eurosport.yahoo.com/notizie/s ... 33992.html

[Italiamia]

La gara con il Torino è l'occasione per presentare la nuova partnership del club giallorosso. L'accordo ha la durata di un anno, ma è prolungabile e l'ad del gruppo tedesco apre ad un possibile sviluppo futuro anche come sponsor sulla maglie

di MATTEO PINCI


ROMA - L'annuncio era già arrivato, ma Roma-Torino diventa l'occasione per presentare ufficialmente la nuova partnership della Roma. Da oggi, il club giallorosso apre il proprio sodalizio con il colosso automobilistico tedesco Volkswagen. "Siamo davvero contenti di annunciare l'accordo con questo partner incredibile", l'annuncio dell'amministratore delegato della Roma, Mark Pannes. Che delinea la strategia: "In questo modo continuiamo il trend di internazionalizzazione della Roma". Un accordo della durata di un solo anno prolungabile, del quale Roma e Volkswagen non rivelano le cifre. Ma a giugno scadrà la sponsorizzazione della Roma da parte di Wind e l'a. d. del gruppo automobilistico Massimo Nordio apre a uno sviluppo che possa portare la "W" tedesca sulla maglia giallorossa: "Non è previsto né pianificato, ma non escludo nulla. Se son rose fioriranno".

I motivi del sodalizio li riassume ancora Nordio: "Con il nuovo assetto societario la Roma è diventata senza dubbio la società sportiva più multinazionale in Italia. E poi c'è il nome Roma, che rappresenta l'Italia in tutto il mondo. Siamo sponsor della nazionale del Brasile, dell'Argentina, della Russia, senza dimenticare che Volkswagen è anche proprietaria di una società di calcio, il Wolfsburg". Il club della città dei lupi, che spinge l'a. d. ad immaginare anche uno scenario: "Si potrebbe organizzare un'amichevole tra il lupo e la lupa". Per ora, meglio restare con i piedi per terra, quelli del direttore commerciale romanista Christoph Winterling: "Una partnership che ci fa capire che siamo sulla strada giusta, visto che Volkswagen valuta con attenzione gli investimenti commerciali. Vogliamo crescere insieme, loro hanno già puntato sui tifosi sponsorizzando la nostra "Hall of Fame" e ci aiuteranno a sviluppare la fan zone che già da tempo abbiamo allestito all'esterno dello stadio".

Intanto la scorsa settimana la casa automobilistica ha girato alcuni spot all'interno del centro sportivo di Trigoria, come ricorda il direttore commerciale Francesco Cimino: "La Roma ci ha aperto le porte di un tempio sacro come gli spogliatoi dei giocatori e con loro abbiamo realizzato due spot all'insegna dell'ironia, la prossima settimana sarà in onda quello della nuova Polo, a inizio anno della nuovissima Up!". Tra gli interpreti, anche Francesco Totti, che anni fa raccontava come la prima auto che si regalò da calciatore fu proprio una Volkswagen: una Golf.

(19 novembre 2012)

http://www.repubblica.it/sport/calcio/s ... -47011271/