I’m Baaack!

By: bingitz2002 | November 8th, 2008

Some of you, I hope alot of you, will get the reference I made with the picture and title, for those of you who don’t, to answer your question, no that is not what I look like. Anyways, after election craziness here in the states and an avalanche of work, I feel the inspiration to write again. I wish I could say it was the team that inspired me, and in a way they always do, but if I were to pick a word to describe Torino so far this season, inspiring would probably be towards the bottom of my list. Nonetheless, a win today has boosted my spirits a bit, even if we played like a Serie B at times. At least Palermo was crappier.

I suppose it would be appropriate to recap what has gone on so far. In summary: not much that I would want to remember. Stunningly poor performances, getting assraped by the refs, and idiocy on the part of the higher ups.

As far as the poor performances go, we can put the blame on any number of things. The most obvious is the Gianni De Biasi is not a great coach. There, I said it. He can occasionally pull something out of his hat, but by and large he is doomed be a yo-yo coach for yo-yo teams. His tactics are uninspired and though its not been entirely his fault, he is misusing the players at his disposal. Yet with Toro it seems that he can win when it is absolutely necessary. He has twice saved us from relegation when a more “qualified” manager had our team going down the tubes and he is managing to keep his job despite being a defeat or two away from the axe. The problem is that the rest of the time (and usually even in winning) the team are dire. What we truly need is to not shell out money on players all the time (what has Bianchi been doing?) but on a good coach that we can tie down. Until them, we will just play with De Biasi’s loose grip on tactics and continue to perform poorly.

As for the refs, the simple question is, “What the fuck?” We have had three, count them THREE legitimate goals disallowed, two of which (Udinese and Samp) could have changed the course of the game at 0-0. Serie A has been rife with poor refereeing in the past few weeks. I think Byron Moreno has had offspring and sent them to terrorize Italian football fans yet again. Toro fans took the unusual step of sending an open letter to Collina complaining about refereeing mistakes while both Cairo and Marco Pisano have complained publicly, but so far we haven’t heard as much as a peep out of the ref’s camp, which leads me to believe something is up.

We all learned from this summer that Cairo is not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to transfer policy, but if there is anything that the opening of the season showed us, it is that this man is clearly not capable of running a football club. Perhaps backing it, but he seems to have been taking classes from the Zamparini school of management. He has helped to alienate a number of key players including Rosina and Sereni and management and created a real mess for GDB, who already has his hands full with injuries. In order for this team to succeed, Cairo needs to take out his meddling fingers. I appreciate that he loves this club, but right now he is hurting it!

Torino-Palermo Review

But hey, at least there’s something to be happy about! We won a game! All in all, we should have been about as inspired as Fabio Liverani would be this evening, but this game seemed to show that our players do have some grit. GDB was forced to field a ramshackle lineup, with Sereni, Corini, and Malonga out injured with Natali and Abate suspened, yet Rosina still found a place on the bench! Nonetheless, we outplayed a sluggish Palermo side in the first half by keeping the pressure on in the midfield, actually showing some fight. Both sides hit the woodwork, but overall it was a dire half.

In the second half we continued to take it to Palermo, playing with a bit more life, but still showing glimpses of that Serie B style attack. After Dzemaili hit the bar, Amoruso put in the followup, but it was ruled out for a very tight offsides. Credit to Cairo for staying calm afterwards (they panned to his box showing him in his seat, calm and collected), if I were him I’d have been flipping a shit at that point. Palermo had ex-Juve man Nocerino sent off for elbowing Dzemaili in the face (though it didn’t seem intentional) and we finally broke the deadlock on 89 minutes as Jurgen Säumel rifled in a volley from 20 yards to give a spectacular ending to a fairly boring match.

Of course after telling you all this, here are the highlights:

Overall, it wasn’t our greatest performance, but it was efficient, we kept Palermo at bay, and most importantly we won, keeping a fine record over Palermo in recent years. Dzemaili was a star, he could prove to be a great acquisition as long as he stays healthy. That’s all for now, and I look forward to writing again!