Italian/Former-Serie-A Players Abroad

[RomaShield27]

This season we have seen quite a number of Italian players and Serie A stars leave for pastures new, particularly as Italian clubs continue to lack behind their European counterparts in terms of spending. From big profile departures like Luca Toni to Bayern, Lucarelli to the Ukraine, to the failure of any Serie A clubs to successfully move for wonderkid Giusseppe Rossi from Man United, Serie A has arguebly lossed more big name players than it has gained this season.


Rolando Bianchi – €13m to Man City

Luca Toni – €11 to Bayern Munich

Giusseppe Rossi – €10m to Villarreal (via Parma, sort of)

Cristiano Lucarelli – €9m to Shakhtar Donetsk

Valeri Bojinov – €8m to Man City

Graziano Pelle – €5m to AZ Alkmaar

Fabio Grosso – €5m to Lyon

Massiomo Donati – €4.5m to Celtic

Christian Abbiati – Loan to Atletico Madrid

Morgan De Sanctis – Free to Sevilla


Its dissapointing to see such quality players leave Serie A, especially young players like Bojinov and Rossi. I find it curious how Milan's neverending hunt for a new striker continues while the likes of Toni, Rossi, Bianchi and Bojinov have all left the peninsula.

Also, they're are a number of Italian players who have been abroad for a number of seasons: Enzo Maresca at Sevilla, Damiano Tommasi at Levante, Luca Zambrotta at Barca, Fabio Cannavaro at Real, Carlo Cudicini at Chelsea.

[Lombardiamia]

The promising Pelle also went to some Dutch team.. :x

[RomaShield27]

Thanks Lomba. Pelle is indeed another promising young player who has left. Anymore I missed, keep them coming...

[vtec]

Rossi: I Made The Right Decision

Giuseppe Rossi has no doubts that he has made the right decision to leave Manchester United and choose Villarreal over a return to Serie A.


The highly-rated striker's decision to move to Spain caused a surprise after he was expected to either stay at Old Trafford or go back to Italy on loan.

Despite the shock his move caused, Rossi is pleased with his choice and he believes that all the early signs have convinced him he can succeed and El Madrigal.

“I’ve joined a very ambitious club,â€

[marco]

Middlesbrough: è fatta per Mido
10.08.2007 21.40 di Stefano Sica
Ahmed Hossam, attaccante egiziano meglio conosciuto come Mido, è praticamente del Middlesbrough. La punta 23enne del Tottenham ha già svolto la prima parte delle visite mediche con i Boro e, se otterrà il nulla osta anche dopo la seconda parte, sarà ufficializzato e presentato lunedì prossimo.

edge, this one's for you. looks like mido has been transfered to middlesborough and is currently undergoing his medical exam.

[vtec]

watched luca toni's bundesliga debut for bayern today, and he marked it with a goal in the 14th minute. he also missed a sitter, though, as bayern went on to win 3-0. miroslave klose stole the show with two goals and one assist, while frank ribery, another new signing, also had an imposing game. bayern should be dangerous in the uefa cup this year.

[vtec]

rolando bianchi marked his bpl debut with a goal for man city. good on him, i hope toni and binachi finish as top scorers of their leagues.

[imperatore]

Rigano signed a two year contract with Levante of Spain

[imperatore]

Harry’s Muntari warning
Portsmouth boss Harry Redknapp has warned ex-Udinese midfielder Sulley Ali Muntari that his overzealous tackling will not be tolerated in the Premiershit. The Ghanaian midfielder was shown a red card against Manchester United on Wednesday and Redknapp feels that he needs to be more level-headed to fulfil his potential. “Muntari is stretching into challenges and he has got to watch it,â€

[juventino_italiano]

Rigano signed a two year contract with Levante of Spain

I remember Rigano' was very good for Messina last season and he was great for Florentia Viola (or Fiorentina) in Serie C2 when he scored something like 30-40 goals

[vtec]

luca toni scored his second goal in as many games for bayern as they shredded werder bremen 4-0. other new signings franck ribéry and hamit altintop also scored. this team is looking pretty scary and should contend for the champions league next year.

[imperatore]

If Bayern Continue like this they can give them the Bundesliga Title now.

[imperatore]

Luca Toni continues his remarkable Bayern Munich career by scoring for the second consecutive match.

The former Fiorentina striker netted in the 4-0 win away to Werder Bremen and earned a penalty for teammate Franck Ribery.


Miroslav Klose went off at half-time due to an injury, but substitute Hamit Altintop provided the cross for Toni’s goal.


It was the Italian’s second strike in as many Bundesliga games, having also hit the back of the net in his debut.


Toni has also found his form as an assist-man, setting up the third goal for Turkish midfielder Altintop before Andreas Ottl completed the rout

[vtec]

The great goal exodus
Roberto Gotta

While taking coals to Newcastle seems to have gone out of fashion, even as a cliché, taking goals abroad has apparently never been easier for Italian players.


With the latter, of course, it's always a matter of potential. Goals, after all, are immaterial even when they provoke the most concrete of responses, and you can't 'export' them just like that, just like another load of tomatoes. You just hope that the players you bring in can produce the goods when required.

But the promise of goals is basically what has prompted this season's unprecedented exodus of Italian strikers to greener pastures (England, Spain, Germany and - er - Ukraine) has meant. Luca Toni's strike against Werder Bremen on Saturday raised his total to two in two matches for Bayern Munich, while Rolando Bianchi's scoring debut for Manchester City at West Ham on the opening day eased the fears that the young Italian striker may find the jump from Reggina to the Premiershit too awkward to take. Eastlands is now the home of Valery Bojinov, too, a Bulgarian who was basically raised in Italy from 13-years-old.

On the opposite side of Europe, Cristiano Lucarelli is now a Shakthar Donetsk player and expected to take his goal tally at least into double figures after netting 63 times in the past three Serie A seasons. Giuseppe Rossi will soon start his first Primera Liga campaign with Villarreal and in yet another corner of Europe Italy Under 21 striker Graziano Pellé has signed a five-year contract with AZ Alkmaar and is already marveling, according to an interview he gave to La Gazzetta dello Sport, at the high standards Louis Van Gaal has established in practice.

A quick count of the export business details turns up the impressive number of 86 goals which left Italy in the summer, although Rossi technically was a Manchester United player and only played for Parma on loan. That 86 is the total the aforementioned strikers scored in the Serie A last year, and it's not hard to see why many commentators moaned about the talent drain that is making our league poorer. Although none of these wise men realize that's the global market, baby, and Italy may well have become a selling country.

Obviously, the constant reference to this trend as being one in which foreign clubs 'poach' players is jingoistic. There was no poaching, obviously, only more financial muscle and better opportunity in football and life, and if someone is to blame it's not the foreign clubs - although it's clearly easier and lazier to do so.

At 21, Pellè should probably be expected to have a less cynical view than he has, but as he told Gazzetta: 'I was growing tired of our calcio. Look at what happened in Catania [when a police officer was killed in a riot]. How can you lose your life for a soccer match? And do you think it is normal that when a team struggles its players get assaulted by the fans? Do I go and punch the cook in the nose if I have a bad dinner? Then we had the Calciopoli scandal, with the loss of credibility. I felt I needed to leave'.

Still, Pellé would have joined Siena or Reggina without blinking had Lecce accepted either club's offer, but they rated their striker at a higher value and here he is, in Holland, back on the scene of a memorable moment during the European Under 21 Championships in June, when he scored his penalty in a shootout against Portugal.

His chipped spot-kick was so finely struck that the ball, caressed rather than kicked, traced a slow, agonisingly perfect arch in the air in front of the Portuguese goal before finally crossing the goalline. That's apparently when Van Gaal, sitting in the stands, made up his mind about Pellé, but it was still surprising to many when his move was announced, as the Dutch league is hardly seen as the place to be right now.

This obviously makes Pellé's transfer abroad much more difficult to stomach for many. One positive effect for all lovers of international football in Italy, though, is that the general public will get to read and see a little more of the Dutch league. It is perhaps only natural that the Italian media takes a deeper interest in leagues where Italians play, but sometimes the tendency of the press to believe the public are only interested in clubs linked to anything Italian becomes ridiculous.

I used to joke with colleagues that younger readers may have come to the conclusion Chelsea actually did not exist before Gianfranco Zola joined them ten years ago, and that the directors should probably have the club renamed since it was always mentioned in the media as 'Zola's Chelsea', as if the name of the club only gained significance when added to 'Zola' (or Vialli, Ranieri, Di Matteo. Now, obviously, it's Luca Toni's Bayern. As we all know, Bayern didn't even play proper football before the Azzurri striker joined them).

Seriously, though, the haemorrhage of goalscoring talent is a matter of concern: the great strikers who left have not been replaced by an equal number of foreign players of similar quality, which makes a mockery of one optimistic newspaper columnist's opinion back in March that the Serie A was getting its swagger back and at least some from the illustrious crowd of Ronaldinho, Eto'o, Shevchenko, Tevez, Drogba, Ribéry, Lampard, Vidic, Torres, perhaps Thierry Henry, would be making Italy their home soon.

As if, obviously, someone like Vidic would leave Old Trafford, where he has a starting place locked up, to join Juventus - that was the rumour then - for the simple allure of the Turin club's name, despite the fact they do not even play in Europe. And that's one reason the many 'exclusive revelations' on the calciomercato are among some of the most ridiculous things in football.

The only high-profile arrival from abroad has been budding superstar Pato, whom Milan see as a valuable addition to their Brazilian colony, but the 17-year-old will only be allowed to play from next January. Other notable purchases from abroad have been Juan and Giuly, who joined Roma, and Grygera, Salihamidzic and Tiago who joined Juventus. None of them, as readers will know, possess the wow factor that makes fans look forward to seeing them in action, nor are there many young players who could become stars like the aforementioned Pato.

What has been particularly galling for many is that none of the football migrants seem to have joined the top clubs in each country, save for Luca Toni, and still his decision left some observers unimpressed because he'd always said he wanted to play Champions League football - Bayern have not qualified. But there is a reason for this: big clubs, and there are just about four of them right now in Italy, could have done with a talent like Bianchi - who after a few weeks at Manchester City still maintained Serie A is the best league in the world - but the price Reggina were asking for his services was deemed excessive by many.

And with the current situation in the calcio, mid-table clubs are not going to upset their financial balance and wage structure by bringing in players whose goals may make a difference of a couple of wins per year at the most, with no practical advantage. Look at Sampdoria, who only accepted the gamble - and gamble it is, a huge one - of bringing back Antonio Cassano once Real Madrid accepted to keep shouldering most of the disruptive forward's costs.

This is also why Lucarelli accepted Shakthar's offer: he would never claim the Ukrainian League wields more class and international reputation as others, but his time at Livorno was clearly up after yet another spat with chairman Aldo Spinelli, and his choice was either join a big club as a reserve striker or make the jump abroad. Sadly, after being the local hero for som many seasons and pandering, admittedly out of personal belief, to the extreme left creed of many of the Livorno fans, Lucarelli was labelled a traitor by some of them. This was shameful treatment for someone who, famously, gave up half a million euros in order to join his hometown club, although too much may have been made of this as he was not exactly signing for Livorno for peanuts anyway.

One curious consideration which makes this goal exodus even more surprising is that it has probably never been easier to score goals in the Serie A. As former Italy Under 21 coach and notorious hard man Claudio Gentile remarked a couple of years ago, man-marking has almost disappeared in Italian players as a football skill, who have been bred to believe zone marking is the Holy Word in modern football.

Fabio Cannavaro may have had a great World Cup and Marco Materazzi has been known to use body, skill and words to great effect, but what used to be the hardest league to emerge as a goalscorer, so much so that the more nationalistic commentators would dismiss the goalscoring prowess of any foreign player unless he'd proved himself in Italy. Which, for example, still makes Ian Rush, in most Italians' opinion, a fraud, because he produced little in his only Serie A season. And the general consensus at that time was that English goalkeepers and defenders were donkeys so anyone could score against them.

Things may have not performed a 180°, but Serie A matches are much more open than it used to be, and the abundance of cheaper, plug-and-play foreign defenders who sometimes do not live up to their job title means there are plenty of opportunities for strikers.

So one thing we may expect from the upcoming season, which I will preview later this week, is a few new names in the goalscoring charts. Which may not be too bad, unless they move abroad, too, in twelve months' time. We may then have to endure a 'Pazzini's Charlton', next summer.

[vtec]

this latest article pissed me off. i can think of at least one big, italian club in desperate need of a keeper, and yet the talent exodus from italy continues.


Amelia Set To Sign For Barcelona - Report

Livorno goalkeeper Marco Amelia is just days away from signing for Barcelona, according to the Gazzetta dello Sport.



The 25-year-old is widely regarded as the second-best Italian shot-stopper in Serie A behind the incomparable Gianluigi Buffon.



Amelia is desperate to quit relegation strugglers Livorno and sign for a top club, however none of the big Italian teams are interested at present.



The ‘Gazzetta’ claims that Barcelona will submit an offer of €6.5m for Amelia, as a replacement for Albert Jorquera who has picked up a serious injury and will be out for six months.



Amelia will then challenge Victor Valdes for the number one spot at the Camp Nou.



Meanwhile in other transfer news, Reggina midfielder Luca Vigiani could be set for a surprise move to Premiership-outfit Portsmouth.



Harry Redknapp’s squad is set to be ravaged by the upcoming African Nations Cup and he is looking to add to his squad.



Vigiani is 31-years-old and has scored an impressive four goals in 14 appearances this season. He is available for just €500,000 as his contract is set to run out in June.



Finally Fiorentina are preparing a bid for Palermo defender Cristian Zaccardo as a replacement for Tomas Ujfalusi, who is looking increasingly likely to leave on a Bosman in the summer.

Anthony Sormani

[RomaShield27]

Italian Players Around the World (7/01)
January 7th, 2008 by Marco Pantanella, mcalcio.com

Continuing my weekly article inspired by Gazzetta dello Sport, here are the performances of all Italian soccer players operating in foreign European leagues. It’s been a while since the last update, but the Winter break had most local championships on hold anyway. Except the EPL, they play tirelessly all year long apparently.

Based on Gazzetta’s info, there are currently 26 Italians playing in first divisions abroad, and 14 of them stepped on the field this week-end. The table below includes the team the player belongs to, their opponents for the week, the number of minutes they played, their contribution (goal, assist), and the final score of the game.


ENGLAND
Player Team Opp. mins. Contrib. Score
Rolando Bianchi Man City @Newcastle 2 / 2-0
Carlo Cudicini Chelsea @Fulham N/A / 2-1

SCOTLAND
Massimo Donati Celtic Gretna 73 / 3-0

GERMANY
Luca Toni Bayern M. NEXT ROUND IN FEBR. /

SPAIN
Fabio Cannavaro Real Madrid Zaragoza 90 / 2-0
Giuseppe Rossi Villareal @Espanyol 90 / 0-3
Christian Abbiati Atl. Madrid @Deportivo 90 / 3-0
Gianluca Zambrotta Barcelona @Mallorca (bench) / 2-0
Enzo Maresca Sevilla Betis / / 3-0
Morgan De Sanctis Sevilla Betis 90 / 3-0
Emiliano Moretti Valencia Levante 90 / 0-0
Stefano Sorrentino Recreativo Almeria 90 / 1-1
Bruno Cirillo Levante @Valencia (bench) / 0-0
Damiano Tommasi Levante @Valencia 90 / 0-0
Christian Riganò Levante @Valencia N/A / 0-0

FRANCE
Fabio Grosso Lyon @Créteil (CUP) 90 / 4-0
Flavio Roma Monaco @Brest (CUP) (bench) / 3-1

HOLLAND
Graziano Pellè AZ Alkmaar Heracles 31 / 1-0

BELGIUM
Roberto Mirri Mons @Anderlecht 90 / 2-3
Alessandro Pistone Mons @Anderlecht 90 / 2-3

SWITZERLAND
Stefano Razzetti St. Gallen SEASON OVER
Andrea Guatelli FC Zürich SEASON OVER

POLAND
Stefano Napoleoni Widzew ?ód? NEXT ROUND IN FEBR.
Joseph Oshadogan Widzew ?ód? NEXT ROUND IN FEBR.

UKRAINE
Cristiano Lucarelli Shakhtar D. NEXT ROUND IN MARCH

RUSSIA
Ivan Pelizzoli Lok. Moscow SEASON OVER
Heroes of the week
This week no goalscorers, sad. No big protagonists either, even more sad.

Giuseppe Rossi’s back to full fitness after his 3-month long injury, but his scoring efficiency still has to return to good levels. He can’t help prevent Villareal’s severe 3-0 loss to Espanyol this week. Meanwhile Rolando Bianchi is back warming City’s bench, and gets only 2 minutes of play against Newcastle. Can’t really blame Eriksson, his team keeps winning…

To be noted that Marco Storari’s loan to Levante was terminated by Cagliari, so the Italian goalkeeper is on his way back to Sardinia. Also note the appearance of Alessandro Pistone (ex-Inter, Newcastle and Everton player) who recently signed with Belgian club Mons, after a succesful trial in early December. He’ll be joining up with defender Roberto Mirri, already at the club since 2004.

Oh and if you want more anecdotes on the Mons club, they also feature Wilfried Dalmat, Stephane’s brother (yeah, the one that played for Inter Milan and now plays at Bordeaux). It’s a small world ain’t it…

[RomaShield27]

Lucarelli poised for Parma
Tuesday 8 January, 2008. Football Italia

Reports from the peninsula suggest that Azzurri hitman Cristiano Lucarelli is poised to sign a loan deal with Parma. The No 99 left hometown club Livorno for Ukrainian outfit Shakhtar Donetsk last summer, but he has never adapted to life in the former Russian republic. Lucarelli has made it clear that he wants to return to Serie A after Donetsk Champions League exit and it appears that Parma have won the battle for his signature.

La Gazzetta dello Sport reports that the Ducali are ready to pay £1.3m for the 32-year-old and will foot his considerable wage bill. Parma President Tommaso Ghirardi has beaten competition from Genoa and Torino – where Lucarelli played between 2001 and 2003.

The prolific marksman scored 92 times in 146 outings for Livorno and has netted on six occasions in his 13 games as a Shakhtar player. Ukraine’s Vyscha Liha takes a break from December 1 to until March 1 and Donetsk Coach Marcia Lucas is happy to let Lucarelli leave immediately.

[marco]

http://www.channel4.com/sport/football_ ... pr18i.html

looks like kahn finally came around from earlier this season and realized what most of us here already know.

[marco]

Calcio: Grosso bersaglio di insulti razzisti in Francia
Indice Ultim'ora

LIONE (Francia) - Scoppia un caso in Francia con protagonista l'azzurro Fabio Grosso, bersaglio di insulti razzisti dopo il gol decisivo segnato nella vittoria del Lione per 2-1 sullo Strasburgo. Secondo la lettura di un labiale, il tecnico dello Strasburgo Jean Marc Furlan avrebbe apostrofato l'ex giocatore dell'Inter con termini come "macaroni" e "rital", modi offensivi di definire gli italiani emigrati in Francia. In piu', parlando di una presunta simulazione di Grosso durante la partita, Furlan ha aggiunto davanti ai microfoni: "Non si puo' dire che l'italiano abbia rinnegato i suoi geni o la sua razza". (Agr)


the frogs are still seething over the wc.

[marco]

Toni wins Muller backing Thursday 24 April, 2008

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

Legendary German striker Gerd Muller believes Luca Toni can beat his record and score more than 40 goals in a single season.

Toni, who moved to Bayern Munich from Fiorentina last summer, has already struck 35 times in 2007-08, netting 20 in the Bundesliga, 10 in the UEFA Cup and five in the German Cup.

“Luca is very strong,â€