Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season
I'm sure Pastore won't leave Sicily solely because of Arancini.
LOL!
i had a couple of them just last week when my uncle came from napoli. whenever one of my uncles\aunts comes here in palermo to visit my mother, the first thing they ask are arancine and cannoli. as soon as i knew my uncle was here in palermo (he's an architect and one of the coolest persons i've ever met), i went to my mother's house to visit him. first thing he tells me, right after a wellcoming hig is "
it's so great to see you kid... now where are my arancine?!" 
Zeem said:
Any truth to the investments Palermo will get for an arabic friend of Zamparini? Looks like he is dreaming of keeping Pastore and building something around him.
nah. this arabic investor (a friend of zamparini who happens to be a sheikh) is just gonna invest into the new stadium construction. that's the only project he's gonna be involved in. and that's absolutely fine for me, as i don't want us to change our management strategies.
Matt said:
Ben what's with the reports of your president calling Del Piero a diver!? Looking through the replay of that incident there was contact, but I admit seeing it the first time from the normal camera that it looked like a ridiculous dive.
Anyway I was just wondering what you've heard on it.
zamparini wasn't specifically referring to del piero. he just complained with the refs association for the several wrong calls palermo was victim of in the last few weeks.
it's quite usual here in italy.... as soon as a club gets damaged by some wrong ref's calls in consecutive games, the president comes out with a public statement to "defend his team".... it's kinda stupid, but everyone seems to do it here.
btw matt, how did your trip to milano went? did u go to the inter -juve game eventually?
albiceleste said:
Indeed lo zio. He's a nice kid. There was a quote from an Italian football journalist saying he is unusual in reagrds that he is a quiet person off the field.
yeah, he is a really nice and down to earth kid. but i gotta say here in palermo we were quite lucky on this concern in the last few years, as all our players seem to be very happy and never cause any sort of trouble, not in the dressing room, neither off the pitch... the last troublemaker\trash talker we had in our team was di michele.
albiceleste said:
I do think too many players run away from the challenge of taking their club as far as they can go prematurely and from us watching from afar one of the key concerns is that he gets time to play.
yeah i know what u mean, but it's hard to blame them. as a football player the first thing u want is to establish yourself as a valuable player. and when you're a youngster in order to get that recognition, u need a club which can guarrantee u enough playtime to prove yourself. but once u get that international recognition, it's normal to aspire to bigger challenges (such fighting for the league title, playing in champions league, joining a top club) and get a higher wage.
palermo can't guarrantee that.
afterall it's a mutual relationship. we give theese youngsters a chance to improve as football players, to grow and to prove themselves into a top league, while they give us their talent and full commitment for a few years.... and for a low paycheck.
infact that's the reason why we never part on bad terms with our players. whenever a palermo player leaves the club, the whole city remains grateful to them... and they always remain very attached to the team.
i mean just look at this, that's the last press conference simplicio made as a palermo player, his "goodbye conference" to palermo. i know most of u can understand italian, but u don't really need to know the language to understand his sorrow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpzborfYCho&feature=related
and that's just the last of them. it usually happens with every player who leaves palermo. when juve came here in palermo last season to play against us, the whole stadium celebrated amauri's return to palermo (even though with a juve shirt) with the chants we used to sing for him when he was a palermo player. at the end of the match he couldn't hold his tears and cryed like a baby, applauding to his former fans.
The special one said:
Sooner or later Pastore will leave the beauty and charming Palermo city but don't worry, your recent history shows your direction and staff know how to manage a club in a successful way. You've lost Amauri, Cavani, Kjaer and so on but you've always found good replacement for those empty slots. I must admit, didn't use to follow Serie A like Premier League or La Liga but, the grow of teams like Palermo, Genoa or Samp, made me want to watch carefully the calcio again (oh, and Miccoli, I need to see this guy week after week. grrr I hate you Ben, watching him live every 2 weeks. ).
It seems to me this year we will have an interesting season, probably the most exciting in 5 or 6 years (seriously, I'm tiring of Inter's dominance). Great young players coming around, well organized teams and good tactical games (some people hate tactical games but I love it).
yeah, as long as we keep our managers, our youth team coaching staff and our scouts, we're gonna be fine... as they've always proven they can provide us a good team, even when a great player leaves the club.
as for serie a, i gotta say the last 4\5 seasons were actually great to follow. i know this inter dominance is getting quite boring, but there's been an outstanding improvement in the quality of the football played by midclass and low-class teams.
last season for instance was absolutely insane. the race for the 4th spot was amazing, with palermo, samp, napoli, juve genoa and fiorentina battling all year long.
plus, another great thing about serie a is that also low class teams (those which usually battle to avoid relegation) always keep playing football... i mean "quality football", with the ball on the ground.
).... would u spend 40, 50 millions on a kid with only 2 season in europe in his curriculum? i'd say 30 millions would already be a great offer.
). I think the press have seized upon him saying he'd like to team up with Messi and play at Barca and Leo saying how nice it would be to have him at Barca.
).
i see