A little bit of everything.

By: Alberico | August 18th, 2008

Well readers, i apologize for not writing the last couple of days but I was away on vacation before resuming school. But unlike me, the SAMP boys have not taken a vacation. These past few days there has been alot going on and alot to talk about, including Samp’s 1-0 win over Siena, Samp’s two prestigious friendlies coming up, transfer talk, and the ying/yang of Lippi’s first squad since taking over Donadoni’s spot as they face Austria this wednesday, which will see our captain Palombo yet not see our golden boy Cassano. But before i start, I would like to take this time to give my condolences and prayers for the Sensi family as calcio has lost one of its most famous figures.

Over the weekend, I watched Samp’s friendly against Siena, which ended in a 1-0 win for our boys thanks to the finally healthy Bonazzoli (knock on wood somewhere). (Go to this link for the highlights, http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=fZx2m_rOmnc; the publisher of the video is not allowing others to embed it.) All the papers praised Samp’s performance as very solid and basically looked like a game from last year’s second half of the season, carried by an inspired Cassano, who looks like he is in great form (a point i will discuss later). Sampdoria started the games as follows: Mirante, Campagnaro, Gastaldello, Accardi, Stankevicius, Delvecchio, Franceschini, Sammarco, Pieri, Cassano, and Bonazzoli. Sampdoria controlled most of the game, and we also saw the debut of Bottinelli, who played a solid 20 minutes, as he begins to get adapted to Mazzarri’s style.

Samp is now back to work as they have 2 friendlies coming up. This thursday will be a very emotional day at the stadium as one of the heroes of the golden years for Samp, Toninho Cerezo, comes back to Marassi as he takes his team, Al Shabab from Dubai, to face the blucerchiati. As read on Samp’s website, Cerezo is very happy about coming back to Genova, and when asked about the current Samp he expressed that Cassano and co. have a great chance of getting better with each season and could fulfill their high aspirations of making Champions League and even competing for a Scudetto.

Then on Sunday in Nyon, France, Samp takes on the Saudi Arabian national team in what will probably be a pretty interesting and hard matchup (i mean at least you would hope, since they are a national team). So much to look forward to this week as Samp is now 12 days away from week 1 against Inter.

Furthermore, I scrolled through the Italian newspapers today and found out that Samp is very interested in Valencia’s Banega <a href=”“>, the 20 year old Argentine midfielder formerly of Boca Juniors, definitely a shining star who could absolutely be another important player for our season. I would definitely welcome him with open arms, and it helps that we have some argentines now on the team But it is not certain how close or far away this deal is from actually going through, and i am guessing that the next few days will really show. I will definitely keep a close eye on the Suazo and Crespo matters as it seems more and more every day that Inter will let them go. Suazo seems most likely headed to Roma whereas Crespo can still land in Genova. As i said, we shall see, but hey, we can hope. I still think Crespo’s skill and European experience could be so beneficial to Samp this year as we are taking part in 3 competitions.

And as a send off, congrats to Capitan Palombo for another deserved call up. I hope he plays well because he deserves it. I just hope that Cassano was not overlooked for good, because Lippi may not like Cassano, but Italy needs Cassano for the next world cup. A player of his caliber can always provide that moment of brilliance that every game sometimes needs. But i don’t know. Cassano is definitely fit enough to play as the friendlies have shown, therefore I can only think the negative. I just know that the qualifications for 2010 start in a month and we need our best players and i think Cassano is one of them. Please Lippi, don’t forget him.