News and Analysis of Serie A

Napoli Shoot the Moon, Make Offer for Sanchez

As we spoke about ear­lier this week, Udinese’s Alexis Sanchez is one of the most sought after trans­fer tar­gets by Europe’s top clubs, being linked with high-priced moves to the likes of Man­ches­ter United, Man­ches­ter City and Barcelona. But now we find the Chilean won­derkid has a new suitor, Napoli. Accord­ing to Udinese’s owner Giampaolo Pozzo, Napoli have tabled an offer for Sanchez.

Now I will admit the chances of City or Barca being out­bid by Napoli are small, but I can’t help being impressed by Napoli for throw­ing their hat in the ring. And besides, imag­ine how excit­ing Napoli would be with an attack fea­tur­ing Edin­son Cavani, Eze­quiel Lavezzi, Marek Ham­sik and Alexis Sanchez!

Snei­jder to Man­ches­ter United…maybe not?

The gos­sip columns are buzzing today with the story that Wes­ley Snei­jder will be sold to Man­ches­ter United, but this rumor seems to be more about con­nect­ing unre­lated dots than any actual information.

First, we have the news yes­ter­day of Inter’s acqui­si­tion of Argen­tin­ian mid­fielder Ricky Alvarez, lead­ing the media to con­clude that Alvarez must have been signed as Sneijder’s replace­ment. But all indi­ca­tions point to Alvarez being signed as depth, and cer­tainly not to fill Sneijder’s shoes which he is likely not capa­ble of doing any­way. Few are.

Now today one mem­ber of United’s coach­ing staff, Dutch­man Rene Meu­len­steen, has whipped the media into a frenzy for remark­ing on how ter­rific Snei­jder would be for the Red Dev­ils. Let me just say this, a coach stat­ing the obvi­ous does not mean United is about to splash a pile of cash.

Cer­tainly mak­ing a move for a player with as much tal­ent as Wes­ley Snei­jder would be a good idea for Man­ches­ter United, and such a deal may very well hap­pen in the future. But noth­ing we have learned over the last few days leads me to believe such as deal is imminent.

Will Roma need a new goalkeeper?

The agent for Roma’s keeper Alexan­der Doni claims the Brazil­ian will soon sign with Liv­er­pool, per­haps as early as today. It was pre­dictable that not long after those reports sur­faced rumors of Roma’s search for new a keeper would begin, and that is exactly what has hap­pened. Sky Sports is report­ing today that Roma is inter­ested in Ajax and Hol­land goal­keeper Maarten Stekelenburg.

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Argen­tin­ian club Velez Sars­field have announced the sale of Ricky Alvarez to Inter Milan, for a fee of around 11 mil­lion euros. The 23 year old attack­ing mid­fielder was a sought after player in the cur­rent trans­fer win­dow and had report­edly attracted the atten­tion of some big clubs, includ­ing Arse­nal and Roma.

Inter’s new coach, Gian Piero Gasperini, promises to bring a new attack­ing style to the Ner­az­zurri and has been quoted recently as prais­ing Alvarez as the type of rein­force­ment he was look­ing for. It was inevitable that Gasperini would sign some attack­ing play­ers, and the Argen­tin­ian appears to have the tal­ent to impress in Serie A.

Alvarez will join a strong Argen­tin­ian con­tin­gent already play­ing at Inter Milan, includ­ing Javier Zanetti, Este­ban Cam­bi­asso and Deigo Milito.

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There are a few com­mon fac­tors that can cause a footballer’s poten­tial trans­fer value to sky­rocket. Those char­ac­ter­is­tics include youth, while at the same time pos­sess­ing a decent level of expe­ri­ence, indi­vid­ual skill, soc­cer brains, attack­ing prowess and some those more neb­u­lous intan­gi­bles that draw fans to sta­di­ums and tele­vi­sions to see them play. This sum­mer, three play­ers who pos­sess all of those attrib­utes, and who sit near the top of the list in terms of trans­fer val­ues, all ply their trade in Italy. And Serie A fans are hop­ing they won’t leave for richer pastures.

Edson Cavani of Napoli, Alexis Sanchez of Udi­nese, and Javier Pas­tore of Palermo are Serie A’s hottest com­modi­ties this sum­mer, and Europe’s elite are cir­cling for a chance to grab them. The prob­lem for Serie A fans is that none of them play for any of Italy’s biggest clubs, and there­fore these excit­ing young stars will most likely be lured away from Italy by the promise of big money.

Coin­ci­den­tally, all three play­ers are cur­rently play­ing in the Copa Amer­ica. And as his­tory tells us, suc­cess at the inter­na­tional level can often inflate the value bal­loon even more. It also means any poten­tial trans­fer will likely have to wait until the tournament’s con­clu­sion, after which we can expect the rumor mill to hit a fever pitch. Already the poten­tial fees asso­ci­ated with each of these play­ers is in the tens of mil­lions of euros. But should any of them truly impress at the Copa Amer­ica, who knows how much they will demand.

Hav­ing said all this, it would be a great shame for Serie A fans if all three stars move off the penin­sula. Pas­tore has lead Palermo to respectable fin­ishes each of the last two sea­sons and has made them a dif­fi­cult team to beat, while Sanchez and Cavani saw their respec­tive teams qual­ify for the Cham­pi­ons League while fin­ish­ing ahead of some of Italy’s tra­di­tional pow­er­houses. This com­ing sea­son has the poten­tial to be quite fas­ci­nat­ing, with more teams com­pet­ing at the top of the table than we are used to see­ing. Should these three all move away, their clubs, and Serie A in gen­eral, will suf­fer for it.

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Photo by lucam

As we enter July, the sum­mer trans­fer mar­ket is sure to ratchet up to a fever pitch. Over the next few weeks we will focus on the top tar­gets who may poten­tially make a move to or with Serie A. Today we focus on one of Italy bright­est young stars, Giuseppe Rossi.

Born in Tea­neck, New Jer­sey, Rossi began his pro­fes­sional career when Man­ches­ter United pur­chased his con­tract from Parma as a 17 year old. As a teenager, he was per­haps the most excit­ing prospect in the United States player pool, so peo­ple were a bit sur­prised when he didn’t blos­som right away for United.

But blos­som he cer­tainly has. After join­ing Vil­lareal in 2007, his game has improved every year and Rossi is now a bonafide super­star in the mak­ing. This sea­son he scored 32 goals in 56 appear­ances for the Span­ish side and is worth the mil­lions many thought he would be worth when he was just that kid from Jer­sey who Amer­i­can soc­cer fans were beg­ging to play for their national team.

Read the rest of this story»

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I am sure you have heard all the old and tired descrip­tions of Ital­ian foot­ball before. The coaches play too defen­sively, employ­ing the dreaded Catanac­cio, and there­fore too bor­ing for the rest of the spec­tat­ing soc­cer world. While I never have agreed with those in the media who per­pet­u­ate these stereo­types, it appears this sea­son we may finally have the ammu­ni­tion to com­bat these views and change the per­cep­tion of Ital­ian football. Moreover, with the rise of online sports betting, more and more people are participating in football betting. Whether you're a seasoned bettor or just starting your journey, you can find the best list of sites to bet in SportsLens. Stay ahead of the game with the best platform.

Two new coaches, employed with some con­sid­er­able risk by two of the biggest clubs on the penin­sula, are set to exert an attack­ing influ­ence on Serie A, as Anto­nio Conte takes over at Juven­tus and Inter Milan will hand the reigns to Gian Piero Gasperini. Both coaches are known for attack­ing foot­ball, and both will undoubtably bring that style to these two hugely influ­en­tial teams.

Gasperini is noth­ing short of a fas­ci­nat­ing and coura­geous hire by the Ner­az­zurri. He lead Genoa from Serie B to the verge of the Cham­pi­ons League, and he did it by employ­ing an attack­ing style that fea­tured an ever-increasingly rare three-man back-line. Using mostly a 3–4-3, Genoa fin­ished fifth in Serie A in 2008-09. Now Gasperini will most likely bring a sim­i­lar sys­tem to the very club cred­ited with invent­ing Cate­nac­cio. It is a rad­i­cal change for Inter, who have achieved great suc­cess in recent years. There is no doubt Gasperini will be under the micro­scope and, like Rafael Ben­itez before him, must pro­duce pos­i­tive results early in the sea­son. But if he should suc­ceed, Inter Milan will look very lit­tle like the Inter Milan we have been used to.

In Turin, Italy’s slump­ing giant will take a sim­i­lar risk on attack­ing foot­ball as Juven­tus appoint club-legend Anto­nio Conte as man­ager. In 2010-11 Conte piloted Siena to pro­mo­tion using a very dif­fer­ent tac­ti­cal approach from Gasperini, but often just as attack-minded. Conte’s 4–4-2 more often appeared like a 4–2-4, with wide mid­field­ers play­ing very high up the pitch. It won’t be as dras­tic a tac­ti­cal change for the Old Lady as we can expect from Inter, but Conte will demand a much more cav­a­lier­ing attack­ing atti­tude than his pre­de­ces­sor. The pres­sure is on Conte to lead Juven­tus back to the top, and the fact that he plans to achieve that goal by push­ing for­ward should prove excit­ing to watch.

Man­age­ment at both clubs must rec­og­nize the mag­ni­tude of the changes they are mak­ing to their team’s on-field approach. And finan­cial sup­port in the form of new play­ers to fit these sys­tems is required if suc­cess is to be achieved. But the great­est chal­lenge to both man­agers, prob­a­bly more so for Gasperini, will be incor­po­rat­ing the exist­ing ros­ter into the new attack­ing mind­set. Either way, fans should be ready for quite an enter­tain­ing sea­son from these two colos­sal clubs.

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The annual carousel of poten­tial trans­fer tar­gets is spin­ning once again in Turin as Juven­tus look to try and build a title con­tend­ing team. As is the sum­mer tra­di­tion, star play­ers from all across Europe are being linked with the Bian­coneri. But while the flashy names are splashed across the head­lines, club Gen­eral Man­ager Giuseppe Marotta and Juven­tus are qui­etly going about the busi­ness of fix­ing what really needed to be fixed.

Today, we get word for Turin that Lazio’s right-back Stephan Lich­steiner is under­go­ing a med­ical and should offi­cially become a Juve player in the near future. The 27 year old Swiss inter­na­tional becomes the first trans­fer of the sea­son that Juven­tus has paid a fee for and joins fel­low sum­mer sign­ings Andrea Pirlo, Michele Pazienza and Reto Ziegler who were all signed on free-transfers.

So for what appears to be a total expen­di­ture of some­where around 10–12 mil­lion euros, Juve has signed a left-back, a right-back and two very capa­ble cen­tral mid­field­ers to replace the poten­tial loss of Alberto Aquilani. Con­sid­er­ing how lit­tle he has spent so far this sum­mer, and the qual­ity of play­ers he has signed, it is hard to argue that Marotta has not done bril­liantly up to now.

Is is true Juven­tus is by no means set­ting the world on fire with this deal, as Lich­steiner is not exactly the sexy sign­ing the media clam­mer for. But he is exactly what the Old Lady needs and sup­port­ers of the club should take notice of what Marotta has accom­plished so early in the trans­fer window.

Any­one who watched more than ten min­utes of a Juven­tus game this past sea­son will be able to iden­tify the team’s biggest weak­ness was in defense, specif­i­cally the full-backs. Gior­gio Chielinni and Leonardo Bonucci made a solid pair­ing in the cen­ter of the back­line, but too often they were forced wide or into bad posi­tions by fum­bling full-backs. Juve needed to strengthen both wide defen­sive posi­tions, and with Ziegler and Lich­steiner that is exactly what they have done.

Juve sup­port­ers may be under­stand­ably sali­vat­ing over the prospect of sign­ing a world-class striker the likes Giuseppe Rossi or Ser­gio Aquero, and who wouldn’t be? But first thing’s first. If Juven­tus wants to play Cham­pi­ons League foot­ball again and com­pete for a Scud­etto, they need a much bet­ter defense than the one that took the field in 2010-11. And that is exactly what Marotta has acquired.

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