The Danish Disaster

By: Kshitiz | October 5th, 2007

The Italian Perspective
This is my first post, and it comes at a time where Sampdoria should be fuming, as well as hiding from shame after the Denmark Debacle.This may seem like starting on the wrong foot, and crying over spilled milk, but their is no hiding from the fact that Samp were dumped by some B grade danish team I didnt even know existed. The general mid-table Italian mentality is to refrain from starting the best team in the UEFA cup, and giving youngsters a chance. The results are all in front of us, only 1 Italian team is left in the Competition, and that too a scudetto dark horse that managed to get over a Dutch Mid-Tabler only after penalties. Is it something wrong with Italian football?? The worl cup and champions league speak volumes about italian football. What is wrong, is the mentality of giving even Coppa Italia a higher preference than the UEFA cup. This seems a bit hyprocritic , since all year round teams state their objective of reaching Europe, but when they actually reach there they dont seem to care a bit.

What did Sampdoria do (or didn’t do) over the two legs
The Blucherati started very well in the first leg. Gennaro “Matrix-HeadButter” DelVecchio banging in the first goal. But after that everything started to go wrong, the danes hitting two within a short span. It was left to Monica Belluci’s Younger Brother ( Just Kidding) to save some blushes, but the damage had already been done. The little aeroplane had a glorious chance to win it in the final minutes, but he couldnt, and by then Erik Hamrén’s men knew they had one foot in the next round . Mazzari calmed some tempers by claiming they were the better side by some margin and were guilty of missing quite a few chances. It was left to him to prove his doubters wrong by winning in the away leg, which everyone knew was going to be tough. Mazzari is, however used to steering his teams away from the whirpool. He managed to get Reggina stay in the topflight, with the 19 point deduction,which is like making Minardi win F1, well almost.
In the second leg, the starting XI was

1 Luca Castellazzi
3 Reto Ziegler
4 Sergio Volpi
6 Stefano Lucchini
11 Claudio Bellucci
14 Luigi Sala
16 Hugo Armando Campagnaro
17 Angelo Palombo
21 Paolo Sammarco
29 Andrea Caracciolo
99 Antonio Cassano

We had Talentino starting after a long time with Caracciolo, but nothing decisive came out of him. I was banking on Reto Ziegler, our english import , to become the unlikely saviour, but it was not to be our day. This seems a pretty good starting XI, except for the fact that it didnt score any goals, even though we have almost 6 strikers in the squad(7 if you count the Cocaine guy, but he is not coming back soon, is he??) and plenty of midfield options. I am being frank, personally I don’t like Caracciolo one bit, he is the Italian Crouch. Sure he is tall, but he has nothing else in his armoury. Except for the brief period at Brescia, he has never come good, not in Serie A atleast. He was woefully out of sorts when at Palermo. We had a great 3-0 victory over Cristiano ” Chin-Man” Doni and his boys last weekend, and I hoped the momentum would have carried into the Aalfborg game, but all reason failed . Now we have another tricky encounter coming up, away to The Granata, and our hope of retaining atleast a European spot rests on our ability to defeat teams lying lower than us in the table. Right now, the pipe smoking sailor would be so pissed off.

Some Random Stuff

a) Chievo Verona’s promising youngster Victor Obinna miraculously escaped death after his vehicle did somersaults on a highway. Curiosly, this all happened 100 metres away from where Jason Mayele died a tragic death.

b) Gennaro Delvechhio tries to prove he is no less a talent than the baldy.
Nostalgia!!!

c)A picture of our very own Antonio Cassano, doing, dunno what!!!
Underwear troubles

d)Just to end on a nice note, here’s the screamer Bellucci scored against Siena. If he keeps on going like this, he will atleast end up with 15 goals.