Weekend Recap

By: bingitz2002 | August 18th, 2009

This weekend was not a particularly memorable in the granata world as we were eliminated from the Coppa Italia and have not made any more dealings in the transfer market. There is still some work to be done before the season starts next week, but it looks like we will be ready for the season opener against Grosseto next Saturday.

The team lost their Coppa Italia Third Round match in Livorno this weekend by a score of 2-0. Despite the scoreline there are plenty of positives to be taken from the match. For much of the game we were the equal of the newly promoted Serie A side and I strongly believe that if we can improve our finishing touch from what we showed today we can easily challenge for the Serie B title. A few points from watching my crappy quality stream as I wait for the full match to finish downloading:

Riccardo Colombo looked pretty comfortable this weekend. When has that ever happened?

We moved the ball really well. Our midfield was passing well and the full backs were linking up well with the attack.

Although we can be reasonably OK with our performance against Livorno we still need to improve our marking as evident in both goals and find that killer touch.

Playing more Coppa Italia matches would honestly just be too much of a distraction for the squad. We have one goal and one goal only this season and that is to get promotion to Serie A. To even try and repeat our quarter final appearance last year would just leave us with more games at a crucial juncture in the league season.

So, although one can never be too happy with a loss to beat ourselves up over it would be a bad reaction to a game that was more of a measuring stick than anything of actual worth.

Transfer Tidbits

Transfer-wise we have some interesting rumors surfacing. The first and most exciting in my opinion regards this guy:

Éder Citadin Martins, Éder for short or “Éder-gol” as he has been dubbed by Frosinone fans is rumored to be the subject of a megabid (by Serie B standards) from Torino. The purported figure is somewhere between €3 million and €3.3 million. Éder is regarded by some pundits in Italy as “the next Kaká” and indeed bears a resemblance to his superstar countryman, at least in his style of play. An attacking mid with pace and goalscoring ability, Éder has been a star in Serie B the past year and a half playing for Frosinone and could fill the gap left by Rosina. This summer he came back to Empoli, the team who co-owned him but if the rumors play out he might not play a game for the empolesi as he could move to Toro. This transfer could add a real punch to our attack, especially if we sell some of our forwards (Abbruscato and Amoruso, namely) and he will certainly find his way to Serie A sometime soon, so why not with us? He may be a little on the pricey side, but with the money we have made from transfers I think he is not out of our reach.

If we don’t land Éder another popular transfer rumor these days is a swap with Reggina: Elvis Abbruscato for Franco Brienza, which would be a steal for us, IMO. Abbruscato is a good Serie B player, but Brienza is an effective Serie A player who could also provide a ton of creativity in the attack to replace the loss of Rosina. Parma is the latest rumored destination for Nick Amoruso while Dominique Malonga could move on loan to newly-promoted Ligue 1 side Boulogne, where he could gain some valuable experience.

Regarding the Dzemaili saga, Cairo and Foschi have frozen negotiations with Palermo for the time being and are now saying that Dzemaili will stay at Toro. The player himself is happy to stay, but many suggest it is a bluff to increase the price for Dzemaili, especially with Napoli now entering the race to sign him. Blerim is a player I’d hate to lose, but if we can milk this transfer for a lot of cash then I could be OK with it.