Coladeros Invitational Serie A Extravaganza GW8–16
Its been a frantic couple of days in the CISAE as games have been squeezed in between meetings and sleep. Lets get straight into the team updates:
Brescia
A lot of more of the same for the blue and white juggernaut, who sits in a plush armchair drinking Brandy and making Brando faces whilst his team burns up most around them. He’s breezed through the UEFA cup iincluding a very tricky tie vs Leeds, and other than losing to Udinese in the league he’s been unblemished in his relentlessness.
Keane, Crespo, Amoroso (6 assists!), Veron and Bowyer are all averaging above 8.00 in league football, and his CB partnership of Henchoz and Marinho has borne early fruit — they’ve only condeded in one Serie A game in 3 months!
Grade — A
Fiorentina
Fast becoming the neutral’s favourite, Curly’s mob are madder than a box of cats hopped up on nip. They’ve absolutely strolled in Europe and scored a helluva lot of goals, only to be foiled when they’ve come up against human opposition.
Kaluzny and Vampeta have been brilliant in DCM with Tsigalko up to 15 goals for the season in the leeague after a hat-trick against Parma. Joe Cole has been very good for so early in a save — though Elefthropoulos and Casillas are both being threatened with Portmeirion if they continue to be so shit in big games.
Grade — B
Lecce
I won’t deny, I’m having a pretty good time of it — with the culmination of the first half of the season being the 5–1 banjoing of Oklahoma Torino. Van Nistelrooy has been ridiculous as has Ortega, and despite Samuel and Hofland being disappointing I’ve been able to remain unbeaten — I’m putting their disappointing ratings down to living in deckchairs sipping cocktails with only the occasional maiming.
Biggest test now will be a run of fixtures against human managers, with 4 in my next 10 games including Udinese and Brescia.
Grade — A+
Torino
Another team that have blown the bloody doors off, other than the 5 goal hammering they got off Lecce they’ve been in every game so far. Vieri and Mpenza have 22 league goals between them, and Tommasi and Jeremies have taken approximately the same number of limbs/amputations.
He’s out of the cup, so his big target now will be closing the gap to the top two and trying to stay ahead of the very congested central league pack, along with persuading Richard Wright to save more shots than the cheese-handed Chiotis and the perenially useless Kirkland.
Grade — B
Udinese
Despite a 6 match scoring drought and every keeper in the game becoming 1960s Lev Yashin against him for 3 months, led by a rampant Exteberria he’s turned around his iffy form, stringing together a series of impressive wins — particularly against Brescia and Verona.
His team do same capable of self-sabotage though, managing to give Piazcenza 1 of their 4 points so far this season along with a shock 3–1 reverse against Venezia. Raul and Shevchenko only have 4 league goals each in 15 games, so perhaps we’ll see Own, Fowler, Elber or Morientes getting a run out soon.
Grade — B-
Venezia
Very much a set of games of two halves (deep breath) for Penner, who has been hamstrung by Bramble’s injury and Thomas Cichon being an absolute weapon. He’s done plenty of tinkering and there are green shoots showing with Marajo scoring 6 in 8 games and arguably outshining Totti, and Cisse leading the line with 6 in 15 games.
His recent good run with wins over Roma, Perugia and Udinese was tempered by a loss away at Steve — but as one of the two lowest ranking sides he has some room to manouvre in the transfer market — with early moves for Gerard and Worns on Bosman’s confirmed for next season.
Grade — C
Verona
Speaking of manoeuvring — at the end of November Mike was manoeuvring himself into a title race and an Italian Cup quarter final after beating Roma. Fast-Forward to January and he’s 5 games without a win and Nicolas Anelka is on the transfer list.
Admittedly, only one of the above things is surprising, but Keiron Dyer can only do so much. Changing his keeper to Barthez has certainly made a difference, but he needs more out of Duff and Carlos in particular in order to get Henry firing, with only 1 goal for the Frenchman in the league this season.
Grade — D
2 games ago, Curly was in 14th, but back to back wins has propelled him up to 5th. 6 points separate 4th and 12th with the big carrot of Champions League football for the top 4.
In relegation trouble, Milan are the biggest fish in trouble with just 12 points and they site 5 points behind Parma in 14th. Dreams of Roma being dragged into trouble may be a touch premature, but losing a big team would make a lot of players available for transfer.
