The door has closed.

Tying up loose ends…

CL

Lista A: 1 Lobont, 2 Cicinho, 3 Castellini, 4 Juan, 5 Mexes, 7 Pizarro, 8 Adriano, 9 Vucinic, 10 Totti, 11 Taddei, 16 De Rossi, 17 Riise, 19 Julio Baptista, 20 Perrotta, 22 Borriello, 23 Leandro (Greco), 25 G. Burdisso, 27 Julio Sergio, 29 N. Burdisso, 30 Simplicio, 32 Doni, 33 Brighi, 77 Cassetti, 87 Rosi, 94 Menez.

Lista B (il gruppo dei giocatori cresciuti nel settore giovanile): 41 Pigliacelli, 42 Frascatore, 43 Montini, 89 Okaka.

List B is for youth system children under 21, hence Okaka. The only names off the list are Loria and iTunes, the former’s omission being something of a 26th man.

But if you add those two (technically), you get AS Roma 2010-11. She’s a beaut.

Photos That Make Your Day

Marco’s slightly creeped by Rosella’s unending cackles and Prade looks like lunch just dropped into his trousers without warning.

I might make this my screensaver.

(And would somebody get Prade a goddamn tie pin.)

Cash Money

[Link]

(Thanks to ForzaRoma for dropping this off for our enjoyment.)

These are gross numbers for this season’s salary, which means before the ~43% tax for this income bracket.

In the complete minority here I assume, but I see nothing wrong with this list outside of Adriano. Unless you’re prescient, hindsight gets left at the door.

Simplicio’s a steal at just over €1m, however, so maybe it was a Brazilian Bosman package deal for one fairly reasonable lump sum and Fabio just got screwed.

More Photos With Which To Brighten Your Day

I went to the website, perused the photos, curious to see where the ridiculous photos lie this year, and three minutes later I inadvertantly found a whole slideshow on YouTube. Just my luck.

Notes:

• I find the old photo of Cassetti sans sidepart an egregious and entirely unacceptable oversight.

  The site’s fine just the way it is (kind of like a mom and pop store – just like the team), but let’s keep the hair current.

• Paolo Castellini looks weeks away from appearing on an infomercial surrounded by flies. Get that man a sandwich.
• Simone Loria…he’s a little bit special.
• On whose mobile was Nicolas Burdisso’s official photo snapped on?

  Also: I think he’s a pirate.

• Fabio Simplicio looks like he could fuck you up. Bout it.
• I think we can safely say there is a severe shortage of razor cartridges in the Roman locker room.
• Borriello was superimposed onto Perrotta’s body, because I know you’re wondering.

Internationals

Mirko: Wales, 1930cet.

Yeremy, Philou: Belarus, 2100.

John Arne Riise wears short sleeves: Iceland, 2100.

DDR: Estonia, 2030.

And finally, to fill the time inbetween, new cdt.

Borriello

I’d like to begin by saying Milan have done some really nice deals for relatively short money this window.

And I’d like to thank them for extending that favor for Roma.

Now all that’s left is to huddle into groups and mutter to each other in disbelief. The club has no money and the financially future can be aptly described as TBD, which is not something Borriello once contracted from Belen. At least these truths are what had been told to us by conventional wisdom and the front page of RomaNews over the last two years.

Going into the Great Calcio Swap Meet 2010, the optimal return was walking back home toting an internal crisis over the big name addition, Valon Behrami. Anything else, like a loan for Mauro Esposito Redux, would be a bonus.

This isn’t a bonus – it’s a gamechanger. It’s the one glaring hole on the team, one which was being plugged with Jenny Craig pamphlets and prayers, not simply filled, but bustling over. The shift of power hasn’t quite changed, but the balance of faith most certainly has. A shot in the arm to both the team and the fans in one fell swoop.

What’s special about this move isn’t the name on the back of the shirt or Marco Borriello himself, who’s good but not great; it’s special for reasons every good team should aspire to us as a foundation building mechanism: his skill sets complement and complete the team. Aerial ability? Check. Finishing? Check. Moves in the general direction of the goal with purpose? Check. Not fat? Check. They need a striker, a proper prima punta, in the box, to lead the line and who can hold the ball up from somewhere which isn’t twelve yards behind David Pizarro. Check, check, check.

In a few words: everything which was so glaringly necessary before, during and after they took the pitch with Cesena.

But it means so much more. Mirko thrived once Luca arrived in Rome and was drawing defenders, and he may very well do the same with Borriello in the XI, drawing defenders, making runs which disrupt defensive structure and winning balls in the air outside the box – what a novel concept. The same could happen for Menez, now likely relegated to the bench and fighting for his place, or Adriano, whose illustrious Serie A return will now mean an uphill free climb – no oxygen tanks – to find some semblance of his former self or else earn a spot with Julio Baptista in the stands. Competition is good. There is now proper depth in the attack, and Adriano can resume the far more palatable position of “roll of the dice” than his previously frightening role of Plan B (I imagine he’d make a mighty fine contraceptive as well). This is a necessity which has spawned a luxury.

And yeah, if we’re going to run out the fan’s favorite pastime of listing names on a team sheet, I’ll go to battle with Totti, Vucinic, Borriello, Menez, Adriano, Okaka and Baptista any day. Those are mighty fine odds, my friends.

Sometimes football can seem all too simple: they had needs from a footballing and tactical perspective and they filled those needs with a very good footballer who’s entering his prime. And all for €10m.

A resounding success from any angle.

***

Most know Borriello well enough, but his year at Genoa in highlight reel form is on the list of Best YouTubers In The History Of Ever, along with Lorik Cana’s Marseille compilation, Caressa in Dortmund and anything Francesco’s ever been in. The man has something of a flair for the mind-numbingly spectacular.

The Rest

Alex: Marchetti > Doni > Rubinho > Pietro Pipolo > Carlo Zotti > Bogdan Lobont

That’s how I’m seeing this right now and will continue to see it until January. If Marchetti wasn’t coming as the backup, Doni’s the preferred. Always helps to remember not long ago he was quite good.

Behrami: I’m not typically a fan of just tossing people around a football pitch willy nilly, but Rosi can easily play midfield – most here already know this – and Cicinho is not a terrible rightback, nor is he completely incapable of playing the wing should emergency arise. There are certainly options in Rome; options which should be able to get the job done against most sides in the league.

And Behrami was always the “luxury”, if you want to call it that, in my eyes – striker was the far more pressing issue.

We’ll revisit the issue of having a piece of shit like Behrami on the team sheet in late December.

Julio Baptista, Cicinho: For a club which has spent the last few years absorbing a hailstorm of criticism over its lack of depth, they could be doing a great deal worse – genuinely. Should the 08-09 crisis arise, I’ll gladly take these two over Souleywhatshisnuts Diamoutene and Filipe “I can’t get a game at relegated Siena” Felipe in a heartbeat.

(My hopes for a JB renaissance have softened considering he’ll be lucky to get half the minutes of Paolo Castellini by January.)

Simone Loria: Take everything said above and apply the complete opposite to Loria.

I have pangs of sympathy for Simone, I genuinely do, because he seemingly can’t help himself. I half expect him to break Borriello’s ribs in training by week 3.

The Greek: Leandro Greco never moved.

Again, he’s a body who looked varying degrees of excellent in the friendlies.

Depth is nowhere near a bad thing.

Mercato 2010

The battle, ladies and gentlemen, has begun.

Valon Behrami: I’ve decided since I’m the only person in the history of Google to have bookmarked a ‘behrami’ search filtered by one hour, everyone else should share in my misery as I alternately remind myself of his positive attributes* and consider a quick and painful method of death. Hence the 24h slowblog.

The latest is that he’s arrived in Milan, which is neither Rome nor Palermo, but is where the calcio world converges on Mercato Deadline Day (duh duh duh) every year. Therefore….someone’s probably getting him.

Julio Baptista: This, of course, is contingent upon Julio leaving a club with no money for one with even less in Schalke 04. Not holding my breath.

Marco Borriello: And with Zlatan now Milan-side (plus a possible Robinho), Borriello is suddenly on the docket. I’m a big fan of this move, partially because Marco’s good at football and Roma could really use someone who pulls the odd goal out of nowhere (he comes with half a retroactive behind-the-back-around-the-billboard-off-the-post technical masterpiece for Cesena), but I’m a fan mostly because Adriano’s fat. That’s all you really need at this point, and I shall expound later.

Marco’s done gone to Juve, it appears, who are turning into the Italian (read: poor man’s) Manchester City. How many players do they need to lose to Bari?

Striker…please?

* – I had no idea he’s only 25. When I say I don’t pay attention to Lazio, I mean….I don’t pay attention to Lazio.

Updates to follow throughout the 24hr.

Snap reactions:

• That was less than good. One might even say it was bad. The result, not the performance, which had varying degrees of not clicking about it, and that, from a training standpoint, will come. (Plus Mirko Vucinic’s inevitable cameo against small teams.)

  But genuinely – they dropped the ball in quite some fashion.

• Roma should never allow another keeper to join another team again. Simply lock them in Bruno Conti’s basement until the complete and utter deterioration of their skills or death, whichever comes first.
• Cesena’s going to win a lot of fans this year, starting right here. Again, there’s really no reason to draw with them even on the opening day of the year, but they’re a mighty cohesive little fighting unit. And, genuinely, I don’t think anyone could’ve expected them to be that difficult that soon – it’s not like they were expected to be Bari coming in – even if Roma’s lack of finishing was the ultimate death knell.

  They probably went from favorites for 20th to favorites to beat off relegation in about 90 minutes. Which probably means they’ll finish 20th.

• Over at the church we had a little discussion about the January mercato – we’re progressive – including this little tidbit.
  

  The quality is certainly going in the right direction (hard not to with such a starting point), and leaves me wondering who will be thrust into the mesh come the chilly months of 10/11.

  I’ll go ahead and toss Antonio Floro Flores’ hat into the ring. Seems like the relationship with Udinese has been mostly repaired – Leonardi and Spalletti now both gone – and if Adriano manages to hoist his kilos six inches off the ground at any point in the season, they’ll throw a parade. A decent enough fit once it becomes readily evident what’s wrong ’round about Sept. 12th.

  Didn’t even take until the 12th.

  I’ve thought all summer they need another striker because Adriano can’t be depended on and though Okaka’s got all the talent in the world, it’s just that at this point. I think I’m right.

  Where you at, Luca?

• Mirko makes Adriano look Kenyan. He’s sort of the anti-Perrotta, who ran all goddamn day with a bum ankle, with about 3 full 90 minute performances in the chamber for the year. The rest is 70-odd minutes and done.

  Not that I’d ever complain about someone who can throw this team on his back for a six month stretch or so (like, oh, last year).

• This was something of a turn back the clock day, with DDR, Perrotta, Mexes and Taddei all flashing various degrees of their former selves. Unfortunately it was directly proportional to years-since-glory-days, and Antonioli won the renaissance lotto.
• John Arne Riise, ladies and gentlemen:

  

• Life, and training, goes on. Hard to swallow, but certainly not the end of the world – or season.

Cesena

At the time of this writing, Nicolas Burdisso has again refuted Juventus with no resolution in sight; Valon Behrami is reportedly thisclose to Roma, to uncertainty, and to tarnishing all that I hold holy; Adriano is out for a month having pulled something jiggly, rumored to be his thigh and partially inspiring this headline; the squad is in major flux with three days of business done having been done in three months and three months of business to be done in three days; and there is a game of calcio in 36 hours with a squad yet to be announced.

This is not a grand opening. It may count in the standings and it may be the very first must-win game of an unripe season, but this is surely not the gala. It’s a soft opening against soft opposition, perhaps even the easiest game of the season, a gift from the football gods and a chance to simply get the season going with a slow roll – a race walk to the starting line.

As for the game itself, there’s not an awful lot to go on. Cesena’s Serie A’s miracle baby but shipped in an entirely new team for their return, not unlike Bologna a few years ago (sacrilegious, I know), so they’re the unknown quantity to a certain degree. But this is Ranieri’s Roma, back to its proper place among the calcio elite and from November on last year, the best team in Serie A. There’s no reason to think that because a summer has come and gone Ranieri’s Roma will have lost its identity.

The simplest of days: they have to win, and we have to watch. That’s really enough in itself so life’s grand once again, but it will be grander in two weeks when anyone has any idea just what in the hell is going on.

Squad

TBA

XI

Doni
Cassetti, Mexes, Juan, Riise
DDR, Pizarro, Perrotta
Menez
Totti, Vucinic.

Time: Sat., 2045 CET
Streams: MyP2P; atdhe.

Complete

Marco Andreolli

Permanent move for insignificant scrilla to Chievo.

The hopes were high, the opportunities were not. It’s a situation no one can bemoan: when called upon he played well, but he’s simply not the quality of Juan, Mexes or CB3*. Not yet at least. And with the old contract coming up and Marco seeing little chance of forging a career in Rome (Juan’s virtually unmovable and Mexes is all of 27 with CB3 also in the mix), this is how the cards were dealt. Similar to Marco Motta: good puzzle piece, wrong puzzle. You wish him the best and move on with the pieces at hand.

And once again, this is a wonderful problem to have.

Paolo Castellini

Loan from Parma with right to buy from the change in Totti’s Ferrari (€1m).

Proper left back, proper defender to play all 12 minutes John Arne Riise will miss this year. I’m knocking on wood, of course, but Riise would still find a way to push himself into the lineup with his knee tethered by a solitary ligament. And in short sleeves.

That’s just how John Arne Riise rolls.

As for Castellini….you can’t really talk about him without mentioning Riise, once again. John’s main attributes are running, durability, the mystical ability to turn Simone Perrotta’s FM stamina stat (I’ll assume it’s 21 out of 20) into a fraction and scoring beaucoup goals at the San Siro. These are the types of attributes which make the backup almost a nonissue so long as he can defend occasionally.

Extenuating circumstance and though John’s not perfect, a nice one to have.

Onto more pressing matters: where in sweet Care Bear heaven can I pick up one of those AS Roma intro giftbags? Does it come with a complete training kit, warmup suit and all three gameday kits, tugging along a letter from Unicredit requesting they be washed and dried with all stains removed, then returned by noon the day after the game or else? And do any of them include a scrunched up David Pizarro like one of Willy Wonka’s golden tickets?

Quasi-complete

Alessio Cerci

Permanent transfer to Fiorentina for ~€3m.

My love for Cerci stems from two undeniable absolutes:

i. He’s Roman.
ii. He’s follically challenged, therefore he earns some sympathy love.

Outside of that, he has me entirely nonplussed. He has abilities, not unlike a number of players in Serie A, but does not seem to possess the mental abilities to extract the most out of them, like so many other players in Serie A. And yes, that’s where he stands at this point: most of the players in Serie A are superbly talented, but the difference between average and good, good and great, great and Totti, is that little something extra which comes from the intangibles.

Cerci’s got some skills – most of them in a straight line – but not enough elsewhere. Maybe it’s the hair blocking brain frequencies. (I’ve heard worse theories.)

Incomplete

Doni

Benfica’s interested.

After a summer in which the funds from sale were salivated over without a suitor in sight, it appears he’s finally needed and…lo, a suitor appears on the Portuguese horizon.

How very AS Roma.

Julio Sergio’s muscles seem to still be ridding themselves of the Spalletti-itis they didn’t acquire from the stands in 08-09, so let’s hope Claudio Ranieri politely requests that Prade, Conti, Montali & Co. not sell Doni just yet or else he’ll fucking kill them all with his bare hands and then bench them at the half of the derby.

I expect him gone by Monday. Just because that’s how it works.

Julio Baptista

Anyone.

I bet Julio’s going to write some sweet ballads on unrequited love and undesirability on his acoustic guitar this year.

The teams that want Julio Baptista do not interest him and vice-versa. At this point in the mercato with the For Sale sign having been out front since, oh, January, there is the ultimate hope that someone whose mercato plans fell through will break the Baptista glass and pull the alarm. So even though nothing seems to be falling in line, we are entering his marketability wheelhouse.

But should he not be sold, I won’t weep. My eyes may well, but I will not weep because I still have that slightest inkling of hope someday he will somehow remember to….run into the box.

Simone Loria

No one’s interested.

You don’t say.

Nicolas Burdisso

The strong rumor is that Juventus thumped up €8m for his services which Roma immediately matched, backed by the near-complete Cerci sale. Juve’s money was accepted; Roma’s was not. What happens now remains to be seen since Nicolas has made his choice clear: only Roma.

Is big, bad Inter a little scared?

When a club which has spent a billion euros over the last some-odd years is afraid of one which is owned by the bank, it’s a rather pathetic indictment on their abilities to build rather than buy a football club.

And this is why I love this Roma. No money? No problem.

Notes

i.) The Serie A opening day is absurd. Saturday opens the season and then…qualifiers. They play again on the 11th. Would it be so agonizingly difficult to push the start back to the 11th, allowing the mercato to finish and teams to truly be formed, throwing another midweek game somewhere in the winter? There’s little rhyme or reason for this, I’m just rather annoyed.

Cesena’s the second soft opening, I guess.

ii.) The thought of Ibra back in Serie A really annoys me also.

A lot.

iii. Take notes, kiddies. (Samp’s been on my mind.)

Cypress Hill and Francesco Totti. Like what.

iv.) The Champions League groups draw is today at 1800 CET. The pots (it’s fairly self-explanatory, I hope):

Suffice it to say, Lyon’s the ideal for team from Pot 1; anything involving FC Barcelona resides on the opposite end of the spectrum.

(They cannot draw either Milan side.)

After the second goal yesterday I Googled a little to see whether or not Christian Panucci had found a new team – he hasn’t, and it turns out he’s retired instead. (Today, in fact.)

Best wishes, should he ever stop by…..at the far post.