Serie A Thread - 2014/15 Season

Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

lo zio said:
;)

coatto was originally a romanesco word (roman dialect). today it became pretty common in every region of italy. it generally refers to people with with no class.
imagine a man stilish, with good instruction\cultural background, polished.... well a coatto is the exact opposite.
a coatto is an unsophisticated, pretty vulgar, rough and unpolished person.
i wouldn't translate it with "chav" as chav, as far as i know, also refers to people with vulgar background and an aggressive mood (am i right on this?). a coatto isn't aggressive. he's just classless.

however, as rich said it isn't really an insult. i mean, it certainly isn't a compliment, but, although the meaning of the word isn't exactly nice, u don't really mean to insult someone when u call him a "coatto". it's more of a mock than an insult. it's just a mocking way to highlight someone's lack of taste (in clothing, in lifestyle, in manners, in pretty much everything).

talking about football players, totti, cassano, rooney, they're definitely coatti. totti is actually a pretty good guy, but he clearely has no idea what style is about... he's not really a cultured person (hence his unpolished nature), and those things make him a coatto.:))

btw abou great avatar! ;)
Click to expand...
Cheers, Ben.

What's the story behind Zeman? I've read he's always stuck to a 4-3-3 and uses a very intense pressing system. Was wondering if you could give us a little insight into this popular manager.
 
Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

zeman is so much more than that, stef. he represents for football what archimede represents for science, what michelangelo represents for painting, what puccini represents for opera. he's the most extreme coach ever existed, the most most brilliant play-designer in the history of the game, the sharpest mind in the history of the game (by far!!!!!)..... oh and he's also completely nuts!!!!:P
definitely the coolest character in the hystory of european football.

that's quite a coincidence abou, as i'm in the middle of a conversation with rfu (a football conversation via pm wich lasted for a few months now), and right now we were just beginning to talk about zeman.... infact i was supposed to send him a pm about zeman precisely in theese days (btw sorry for being late rfu).

so listen, that's what we'll do. if there are other people interested in zeman in this thread, i'll just write a post here (instead of a pm)......... otherwise i'll send u (too) the pm i was about to write to rfu alone.
i don't want to impose myself on this thread (more than i already do) and dominate the conversation by writing a long post about a coach who isn't even coaching a serie a side right now, unless there's an actual interest on this topic. :))
 
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Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

Of course.

There's always interest. ;)

Especially in a man like Zeman. His Lecce side was so good to watch a few years back!
 
Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

A couple of weeks ago i heard James Richardson (Guardian football podcast) about Zeeman at Foggia, with this president who went to jail and the crazy results they had... I'm very interested.
Ben, you are one of the most interesting posters on this forum. I thank God and Che they invented the internet and that for the sole reason that i learned to know you...so please go ahead.
 
Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

I've heard of Il Foggia dei miracoli but don't know exactly what is.

Off-topic: I hate International games on Friday because there's no footy in the weekend.
 
Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

ok then. rfu, this time i'll reply u in here. this message will obviously be way shorter than the sacchi message (it's got to be more "forum friendly") but i'm sure it'll be enough to satisfy your curiosity.

ok so, summer of 1982. 2 young "wannabe coaches" make history by getting the highest graduation vote EVER at the coverciano courses. i assume u guys know the coverciano school for coaches.... the one which gives u the license necessary to become a professional coach in italy. well the final test (actually it's not really a single test, is a series of exams) will give u some sort of a "degree grade" a final votation (on a scale from 1 to 100... if u get less than 60, then u failed and that means u have to go through the whole process again). well the commission who rates the young wannabe coaches is unbelievably accurate as every coach who ever got a great votation turned out to be a world class coach.... just a few examples to give u an idea of how reliable this commission is: trapattoni got an 85, herrera got 78, viani got 80, rocco got 82, bearzot got 85, lippi and gasperini got 90, ancelotti and spalletti got 92, capello and prandelli got 91). rfu i know i already told u all this, but i need to do some catching up for the others.

well in that summer of '82 there were 2 guys who got a record degree vote. the previous record was an 88 (achieved by the great Liedholm).... those 2 guys got a 94 and a 95. the one who got 94 was arrigo sacchi the guy who got 95 was zdenek zeman.
as one of the members of that examination board will say in an interview, many years later...
they were 2 weird guys.... they clearely didn't belong to football's world. one (sacchi) was just a normal shoe salesman from romagna... he looked kinda humble at first sight, but as soon as he opened his mouth u could realise what an ambitious man he was... he wanted to change football in italy... he eventually changed the way the whole game is conceived all over the world.
the other guy (zeman) looked out of place too. he was too elegant, too sophisticated, too clever to become just a football coach.... his backgroud too wasn't the typical coach's backgroud, as his father was a very important doctor in his hometown Prague .... u would expect such an intelligent person to follow his father's footsteps and become a great doctor aswell."

and indeed u would... so why did zeman decided he wanted to be a football coach?
1968...a 19 years old zeman moves from his country (czech) to palermo to visit his uncle Cestmír Vycpálek, (here in palermo we used to call him Cesto). Cesto (who was a former player for juventus and palermo) was coaching palermo those days. Cesto was working for free, as he used to say "i can't take money from the people who saved me and my family" (during WWII when Cesto was in Dachau concentration camp a sicilian fellow prisoner gave his life to save him...... and many years later, a sicilian family living in prague, gave refuge to cesto's family when the russian army invaded Czechoslovakia and then they helped his wife and son to move to palermo as stow aways, so they could join Cesto himself, who was already coaching palermo).

anyway zdenek reached palermo right when the russian army was invading his homeland... he fell in love with palermo, so he decided not to come back to Czechoslovakia. he studied here, graduated here and he also found the love of his life here in palermo.
but most important, his uncle Cesto "infected" him with his passion for football. and that's how zdenek decided to become a coach.

while studying to become a professional coach, zdenek was already making some experience, coaching palermo's youth team. from day one was clear to everybody this man was a football genius. the coverciano school will give him the usual huge football knowledge italian coaches can showcase, but his understanding of the game didn't come from coverciano school. he was a natural. after graduating as a professional coach, he got his first assignement in foggia, an average serie b team.
that foggia team will make history!
he turned a bunch of nobodies, of average players into famous stars. in 2 seasons that team will reach serie a..... and once zeman's foggia made it to the big stage (serie a) the whole europe was able to see that amazing team.

it's just impossible to describe how beautiful that team was to watch... it was just crazy. zeman's training sessions were simply unbearable. as a result of that the players on the pitch looked like 11 usain bolts on steroids!
but pace was never zeman's first concern.... passing game was. he was a football teacher, he had an unbelievable ability to improve his players' skills.
just imagine a team running with british pace, passing with italian accuracy and moving with the dutch off the ball movement and applying sacchi's zone coverage.

impressive isn't it? but that still won't give u an idea of what i'm talking about. because u see, zeman's zone was even faster than sacchi's zone... even more extreme. he applied that phylosophy to an extremely aggressive 4-3-3 formation, where the sidebacks acted like wingbacks, constantly overlapping with the wingers.

there was basically no filter at midfield. no defensive midfielders. 2 registas and a metodista.... and both the wingbacks used to push AT THE SAME TIME!!!! for most of the match u could see only 3 foggia players in their own midfield (the GK and the 2 cbs) everyone else was pushing upfront.

thanks to zeman's exhausting training sessions, his players were able to apply his off the ball movements incessantly... for the entire match. just imagine genoa's off the ball movement or barca's off the ball movement...well those teams would look as static as the current playing liverpool, compared to zeman's off the ball movement.

but then again off the ball movement wasn't zeman's signature either.... like i said, passing game was the best feature of that foggia. u see most coaches don't really design plays. coaches shape the defensive phase of the game... as for the offensive phase, most of them just shape some basic movements and that's all. they usually rely a lot on their players creativity and instinct.
zeman wasn't like that. he took total control of the offensive phase of the game by designing dozens of different plays and schemes. revolutionary crazy schemes, which used to involve in the same play 6 or even 7 players.
and he had his players practicing those schemes in training again and again and again until they became someting natural for his players (pretty much like breathing).

the huge fitness and stamina the players had thanks to those training sessions, the unpredictability of those wonderful schemes, the fact that the players knew those schemes perfectly... zeman turned that foggia into a scoring machine. it was pretty much impossible to take the ball away from foggia's players... all the passes were first or second touch, so the players never hold the ball enough time to allow the opponents to apply pressure on the ball carrier. and it was impossible to tell where the ball was going, as at any second, there were about 7 foggia players running around the opponent's box.... they were the harlem globtrotters of football.
and we're not talking about a top class team filled with top players.

the italian journalists created a new word: zemanlandia. zemanlandia is an imaginary, utopic, fantastic place, a place where football always equals to entertainment. zeman brought zemanlandia wherever he went to coach in his carreer.

was that a "perfect team"? no, far from it. infact zeman's teams were always extremely naive. zeman was obsessed with offensive football. defending is almost a blasphemy to him. he use to say "i defend by attacking. i keep the possession line in the opponent's midfield and that's my approach to defending".
as u can easily imagine such an approach never really worked that well. zeman's team used to score 3, 4 goals PER MATCH! but they also used to concede 3,4 goals every time.

it was quite frustrating for the fans, but they loved him as he gave em such an amazing show on the pitch. as for zeman, whenever a journalist used to criticize his ultra-offensive style of playing, he used to reply.
if u concede 3 goals and score twice that's a problem... if u concede 3 goals and score 3 that's still a problem...... but if u concede 3 goals and score 4 times, then there's no problem at all.

that's another great thing about zeman. his mind is razor-sharp. arguing with him is extremely dangerous as he will most likely OWN u with his witty answers. there are books and websites filled with his one liners and aphorisms. and i'm not kidding
http://www.zeman.org/zeman-pag.php?PagID=4

another very charming thing about zeman is his captivating and absolutely unreadable look. there's something magnetic and mysterious in his eyes... whenever he talks u can't ever tell if he's being serious or if he's just teasing u... he's like the monna lisa!

anyway all the criticism he received for his unbalanced gameplay never had an effect on him... he used to reply by saying.
"i'm not here just to win. i'm here to teach something to my players and to entertain the fans watching the game. that's my first goal. afterall sport isn't just about winning. it's also about how u win.... people call me a brilliant loser because of my 2nd and 3rd place with lazio..... but hey, very often losers have more to teach than winners"
or...
"i don't care about winning, if dignity is the prize i have to pay for it. i'd rather lose as a man than win as a coward"...
or...
"a coach isn't in control of the result. the only thing a coach can control is the performance of his players. and i always make sure my players give the best performance they can..... results are unpredictable and uncertain.... performances aren't".

u can clearely see what zeman is about from this quotes. he's extremely naive but he also has the most romantic vision of football. he's brilliant as much as he's crazy.
and he's a nonconformist, a rebel.... in a country where everyone used to apply man marking and catenaccio, he shoked the public opinion and the football's establishment with his high voltage zone coverage and offensive schemes.
he didn't make the impact sacchi did, because, just like the great Nils liedholm or fascetti, he was a lone wolf.... he never wanted to become a leader... he never wanted to prove everyone wrong (that's what sacchi did), he just wanted to display his football and entertain.

we might say, if sacchi was football's copernicus, zeman was football's che guevara.
yet, even though his rebel, nonconformist attitude showed he never wanted to become a benchmark, with his amazing football he managed to became a "maestro". a few years ago, after a arsenal-juve matchup in champions league, during the post match interview an italian journalist asked arsene wenger who was his "teacher". arsene replied he didn't really have a teacher, but an inspiration... and that inspiration was zdenek zeman. he said "if i didn't watch his football i don't even know if i would be a coach right now... infact most of my ideas come from him..... although i'm not as crazy and offensive minded as the Maestro..... but then again, i'm already blamed for being too offensive, so i could never really play zeman's football as that was way more offensive-oriented than mine".

there would be much more to say about zeman... i should talk about his awesome lazio team, about his great experience as roma coach or about is lecce wich was another great team..... but i guess this post is already long enough.

this summer, after a long retirement, zeman was hired by foggia (his first love).... so far foggia played 7 matches this season.....they scored 18 goals and conceded 15 in theese first 7 matches!!!!! zemanlandia is back!!! :BOP:
needless to say, i can't wait for him to come back in serie a!!!
 
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Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

Awesome mate! You wanted to hide this from us? :D It should be on an encyclopedia or something.

I have not been a football follower for more than 6 years now so Zeman is not that clear figure for me. From what I understand he can never coach a top club or even a mid club with his personality conflicting with player's ego(like Brescia) and presidents not accepting his ways. I really hope to see him in Serie A as you made him look a never to be missed coach.
 
Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

Great story Ben.
In the Guardian's podcast James Richardson told a story about Zemand and Foggia that is nearly identical.
Two additions:

Zeman smoked like a chimney.
Zeman used to a handball player were prepared passing/attacking routines are used all the time.

One last thing:
Richardson said Zeman was his big idol. His first assignment as a young journalist in Italy was a post-match interview with Zeman. Richardson had prepared an unbelievable amount of clever questions to impress Zeman. He asked his first question and Zeman looked at him, took a cigarette allumated it and smoked it completely before answering the question. Richardson was thinking all sorts of negative things meanwhile ("this is the end of my carreer before it even begun", etc...). But Zeman answered his question quite intelligently. Second question, another endless pause... Richardson said Zeman did it all the time at press conferences...

Keep it coming Ben, i want tohear about Lecce and Lazio and Roma...
 
Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

very nice find stef! i never heard that song before!!! it kinda gives u an idea of how cool zdenek is... i mean how many coaches today have such a famous singer writing a song dedicated to them?!?

anyway Gerd, after reading your post, i visited the guardian's website to check out that podcast...... i gotta say, very good stuff!!! they talk about zeman for just about 5 minutes (the last 5 minutes of the podcast) but pretty much everything they said is 100% correct.
just 3 mistakes. first, richardson remarks how unbelievably paced zeman's foggia was.... and, like i said before, that's true.... but it's not like pace was the main feuature of that foggia. quality passing game has always been zeman's manifesto. a endless web of first\second touch passes, a very free flowing developement of the plays, granted by the continuous off the ball movement of the players and by their complete understanding of zeman's schemes (like i said before zeman had his players practicing those schemes continuously).
second little thing..... foggia stadium is not the via del mare stadium.... that is lecce stadium!
third mistake. he said zeman came to italy when his uncle was coaching juve. not correct. Vicpalek will eventually coach juventus... but that'll be years later. when zeman came in italy (1969) Cesto was coaching palermo... infact, like i said, he liked the city so much he decided to make it his "second home", to finish his studies here and even to get married here with a sicilian girl (they've been married for 40 years now!!!). he still has a house here in palermo, and he comes back here every now and then.
however richardson might have had just a lapse there. coz just after saying "he visited his uncle who was coaching juventus"..... he says "so he decided to stay in palermo"....

anyway everything else they said is absolutely correct. i'm also pleased richardson remarked how hugely charismatic zdenek is. that look in his eyes when u make him a question.... that's just priceless.... like i said, coolest character in european football history. period.

he also says something very, very true about zdenek "he's a very frank speaker". that's a key aspect in zeman as he is completely unable to lie.... or even to say something he doesn't believe in.... he's a real pure hearted man. and that incapacity to lie will eventually destroy his carreer (i'm obviously referring to his accusations to moggi).

from richardson's podcast said:
so i asked him the first question, and he fixed me with his steely gaze, smiled in a an ironic fashion, drew on a sigarette, and then 30 or 40 seconds after, he eventually answered my question.
Click to expand...
LOL!! that's so like zeman!

oh and btw, yes he is a big smoker (i actually can't even picture him without a sigarette), and yeah his handball background is a very important factor (that i completely forgot to mention).

u just gotta love richardson.... to be brutally fair, by italian standards, he would be average at best..... but still he's one of the very few british football journalists who are actually worth listening to.
zeem said:
From what I understand he can never coach a top club or even a mid club with his personality conflicting with player's ego(like Brescia) and presidents not accepting his ways.
Click to expand...
yeah he had some troubles in brescia, but in the rest of his carreer he's never had any troubles in handling egos.... and he's coached some of the biggest egos of the '90s (totti, balbo, fuser, mancini). the truth is all of his players loved him. u won't find a single player who won't tell u what a great guidance (on and off the pitch) zeman was for him.

as for the presidents, yeah he always had a love\hate relationship with his presidents... because obviously presidents tend to get angry when u end a match 3-3, after having a 3-0 lead at half time..... but that's zeman, he just can't be cautious... it doesn't matter how the match is going, he always wants his player to perform his high quality, offensive ultra paced football, even when it would be smarter to settle down and protect the box from counters.

however he did coach a top class team. lazio. it was the 94\95 season and that team ended the season with a great second place. the problem with zeman is that, when he wins, he wins in style (i remember a stunning lazio 8 fiorentina 1 or a 5-0 against napoli and a 3-0 against juve in torino)...... but since his style his soo offensive, as soon as the opponents manage to cross the midfield line with the ball, they will most likely score.
counter attacks are zeman's biggest enemies. like i said before, it's very very hard to intercept his team's passes... u can see just about 3 or 4 intercepted passes IN AN ENTIRE GAME!!!! the thing is, since he leaves just about 3 or 4 players defending, those 3 or 4 interceptions will probably lead to 3 or 4 conceded goals. and u don't win any titles conceding so many goals.

that's why he never won any title.... that and the fact that moggi used all his power to destroy him and his carreer.
however results are not important when zeman coaches your team. because, as a fan, you're so excited by the quality of the football your team plays, that u can't even be mad at him for not delivering.
infact that's a very weird thing about zeman. think of wenger. there are many arsenal fans who feels frustrated for his careless approach to defending (although zeman's football would make wenger's football look as defensive as mourinho's football!)..
that doesn't happen with zeman... even after loosing a match their team should have won... even after loosing a match u were winning by 3 goals at halftime, the fans will leave the stadium saying "oh too bad we didn't win..... but boy what a great match that was!"
and when u think at the tipycal italian mentality (results are more important than the performance) zeman's team fans' reaction gets even more impressive!!!

another great thing about zeman is his UNMATCHED ABILITY TO SPOT TALENT!!! i know we usually say this about many coaches.... but just take a look at this: theese are the talents discovered by zeman.
signori, shalymov, baiano, totti, cafu, alenitchev, kolyvanov, nesta, marcheggiani, nedved, vucinic, bojinov, chevanton, ledesma.
he's the one who discovered nedved and brought him in italy (lazio). he's the one who brought cafu in italy.... he's the one who discovered a young signori and brought him to foggia (and then also to lazio), he's the one who discovered nesta's talent and zeman was the coach who decided to bring a young nesta into the first squad (after watching him playing with the youth team). he's the one who turned totti into a legend (as totti himself likes to say).
and there are probably so many more young talents i'm forgetting to mention.

there are litterally hundreds of videos of zeman's interviews on youtube... i don't think there's a coach in the world who has more interviews uploaded on youtube... and that's precisely because of his character.... unfortunately they're all in italian..... but i managed to find an interview translated in english..... here u are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eAuWd2shxw
 
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Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

i'm atheist but Zeman is my god since he trained Licata ,it's strange that lo zio didn't mention this small club from Sicily, Zdenek's succes started there...
I still remember a Foggia -Cosenza i watched with my dad in Zaccaria's stadium during Foggia's serie B year. we lost 5-0 and our goalkeeper saved two penalties!!! Goal were scored of course by Signori, Baiano (that was already quite famous) and Rambaudi...
Another incredible memory about Zeman was the year when Capello's Milan won scudetto without losing a match....well, last match of the season was Foggia-Milan and at half time the score was 2-1.... i remember the speaker at the stadium announcing it, everybody thought "only Zeman can beat them!"... unfortunately the final score was 2-8 for Milan!!!
That explain exactly how much Zeman likes to play offensive against every team even if his team is winning

some other famous players that need to thank zeman are Gigi Di Biagio, Dan Petrescu,Candela, Seno and Manicone (both Inter players after Foggia), Mancini (the goalkeeper)....Delvecchio scored something like 18 goals in a single season with him on the bench!!!!




YouTube - Il Foggia di Zeman - I migliori 20 goal ZEMANLANDIA


p.s. zeman's assistant was Delio Rossi, imho best serie A's coach actually
 
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Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

you're right gigi. zdenek himself considers his licata span as the most succesful experience in his carreer. it was infact the first professional team he coached after leaving palermo's youth team (even before than foggia). i didn't mention it coz my post was already soo long :P

btw i just found out that video i posted is an excerpt from a documentary on zeman espn broadcasted... and there are also other parts uploaded on utube.... here they are.

introduction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGBLRnMDGxc&feature=related

his arrival in roma
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gBt4H2Zb5c

zeman and the fans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iSP7cSL418&feature=related

zeman and totti
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOrDXWukpYM

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gigi said:
p.s. zeman's assistant was Delio Rossi, imho best serie A's coach actually
Click to expand...
:CONFUSE:
wow! i didn't know that! thanks for the info Gigi. u should post here more often mate. u always have interesting infos :BEER:
 
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Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

Great posts from Ben and Gigi.
Thanks for the ihnterviews too.

Slightly off-topic.
I really like Richardson, he loves Italian football. On the same podcast there is a certain Barry Glendenning who likes to provoke a lot. I find him rather funny, but he doesn't like Italian football at all (or he's playing that role, i have a feeling that he is performing the dark sode of Richardson, they seem to know each other veruy well).
I listen to this podcast on the train to work and i really enjoy it. Sometimes Jonathan Wilson is on it, he(s my favourite football journalist and at the moment he lives half of the time in Argentina. I hope he will write a book about Argentinian football...
Sorry for the off-topic.
 
Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

Hey Gerd, are his podcasts English centered? I'd be interested in listening to a football podcast that talks about Italian football.
 
Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

They are basically English centered but they also talk about other competitions and they have specialists for other competitions: Syd Lowe for Spain, Raphael Honingstein for Germany, Paolo Bandini and Richardson himself for the Serie A. The foreign league that gets most attention is La Liga.
You should try it Stef....it's really entertaining IMO...this evening there is a new one (twice a week normally, on monday and thursday).
 
Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

That's a fantastic summary of Zeman, Ben!

As for Richardson, he used to present one of the few shows that covered Italian football over here, Football Italia, a while back. They should really bring AC Jimbo and that show back, if only for his great puns, such as (On Juventus vs Palermo) "Is the Old Lady gonna get a pink pounding?" or "Inter fans have, like a man eating a milipede, tasted defeat many times." :LOL:
 
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Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

Fantastic posts indeed! Awesome stuff guys. Very informative.

And yes Gigi you should post here more often. ;)

Aboutreika18 said:
They should really bring AC Jimbo and that show back, if only for his great puns, such as (On Juventus vs Palermo) "Is the Old Lady gonna get a pink pounding?"
Click to expand...

:P :LOL:
 
Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

It looks like we just defeated Serbia 3-0..
Some people is just a waste of space on this Earth.. I hope they will NEVER enter a stadium again :(

PS: I'm just seeing it on TV now.. They showed a Serbian girl on the stands, scared as Hell, that was sitting on her seat in disguise, in the middle of the people throwing flares and trying to break out of the glasses..
What has she done wrong? Why HUNDREDS of Serbian people that came here to see the match have to be DEPRIVED of the fun and of the enjoyment just because a handful of people don't seem to give a damn about sportsmanship and rules?

Why can't we have also in football the same Serbian attendance that we had in Rome sunday during the Volleyball World Cup, attendance which has been WONDERFUL?
 
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Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

And those school kids in the stadium. They should have canceled the game from the start but still a mess to let a hundred people stop an international match like this. The choice of stadium wasn't great either.
 
Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

They attacked Stojkovic (GK) because he went from Crvena Zvezda (Red Star) Beograd to Partizan Beograd. They were always arch rivals, but after the civil war this rivalry has become worse...i really do not understand things like that.

If i was one of the players, i would quit with the national team...stark contrast with Montenegro. Serbia seems a rather strange country.
 
Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

Zeem said:
The choice of stadium wasn't great either.
Click to expand...
why mate? no italian was involved in any of that shit... and the genova police handled the situation perfectly..... actually they were a bit too good, if u ask me...
i guess the italian police has learned its lesson after the man utd fans scandal in roma a few years ago.
i got to be honest, i really admire theese policemen. how can they keep their cool in such a situation! i mean, if i were a genovese policeman yesterday.... i would have turned into a slaughterer and just kicked the shit out of every serbian nazist ass i could. :P
ale said:
Why can't we have also in football the same Serbian attendance that we had in Rome sunday during the Volleyball World Cup, attendance which has been WONDERFUL?
Click to expand...
u already know the answer ale. because volleyball doesn't attract the same mediatic attention football does.... and a football match against italy? what better chance to get the visibility theese beasts look for!
beboq said:
Serbs should be banned , bunch of mutants if you ask me.
Click to expand...
i perfectly understand your reaction, bebo. i got to admit, when yesterday i heard on tv that even genova's Palazzo Ducale was vandalized by that scum yesterday.... well i said things i'm not really proud of against serbians.....

but that's just a first "gut reaction". once the anger calms down we have to realise that there were about 1000 nazis bastards in genova yesterday (the total ammount of serbian fans was about 3000 but those rioting scum were just a minority), while serbia is a 10 millions people country..... we really can't associate an entire country to that scum.

like ale remarked, last week, during the volleyball world cup in roma, we had hundreds of nice serbian fans in here.
so it would be insulting and unfair towards serbia to throw shit on an entire country just because of what 1000 animals did yesterday.

actually something pretty similar happens towards italian cities. i very often hear people saying "oh yeah, italy is wonderful... but stay away from Napoli.... it's a very dangerous city!!!"
needless to say those people who give theese sort of "warnings" have never set foot in napoli and base their laughable opinion on those images of napoli ultras they get to see on tv every once in a while....... or who knows, maybe they watched gomorra at the cinema and they think napoli is not a "safe city to visit".
the funniest thing is (and i'm sure anyone who's ever been in napoli will confirm this), napoli isn't just "not a dangerous place to be".... it's actually the most wellcoming city in italy with the most caring, creative and passionate habitants in italy (even more than us palermitani).

the truth is theese pseudo-nazist\fascist scum have no homecountry. u can find them in france or in germany... in england or in spain, in usa or in the balcans.... hell u can even find them in italy, wich is the most anti-fascist\nazist country in europe. yeah i know u guys might be inclined to believe italy has lots of fascists (because of those dozens of fascist ultras u get to see in the italian stadia)..... but the truth is different. italy is the european country where the extreme right party gets less votes... and it has been like this for the last 50 years.... as a matter of fact italy is the most anti-fascist\nazist country in europe. and that's another proof of how deceiving theese ultras episodes can be.
 
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Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

6Qhz


Apparently they caught the leader of the hooligans. He was hiding in the baggage compartment of a bus. They were asking fans to take their tops off to see if their tattoo descriptions matched his. Well done for catching the bastard.
 
Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

:APPLAUD::APPLAUD::APPLAUD: they should of lasso him from the start. It`s bothersome how those (few)unfriendly serbs dictated a game from being played :CRY: .
 
Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

Some speculation that this happened as a protest over Clinton's visit to Pristina this week. There are elements in Serbia who are unhappy that Kosovo is semi-independent, and this may have been a protest at and that they targeted Italy because, not only was it played at the time of the Clinton visit, but also it was the main NATO host/base in 1999.

It's a shame there are big problems with some of the youths in this part of the world... When people live in conflict and civil war often the effects remain years after the conflict ends. Even though there arent so many wars in ex-Yugoslavia these days, from 1991 to 1995 the whole country was destroyed, and again there were problems in 1999.

All of this stuff should be left in courts or parliaments, but it shouldn't ruin a football match.
 
Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

Completly agree edmundo.
There is a stunning documentary about the Yugoslavian football team that won a world title in one of the youth categories just before the cilvil war. This was the team with Prosinecki, Boban (Croatia), Savicevic (Serbia-Montenegro) and Mihaijlovic (Serbia). You see this great team disintegratie because all the nationalistic and ethnic differences...

The civil war was also the reason why one of the best club teams ever won the CL only once: Crvena Zvezda (against Marseille) with the players i mentioned and the great libero at the time: Belodedic... I still think this one of the best club teams ever, perhaps even the best ever (Kenny Dalglish once said that this was definitely the best team he ever saw...you don't have to believe me, but if Dalglish is saying something like that...there might be a reason to think that).
 
Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season

The thing is most of these differences were just political constructs... Back in 1970s and early 1980s nobody cared if you were Croatian, Slovene, Macedonian, Bosnian or Serbian, in fact places like Mostar, Sarajevo, Titograd, everyone married different people.

Everyone served in the JNA (Army, Navy etc) for some years (around 17-20 years old) and then they would boot you off to some place in another district and you would be with totally new people. If you were some guy from a village in the middle of the country they could send you off to Split (on the coast) and join the Navy, or up to Maribor and to serve in the Mountains...

It's only in the 1980s that politicians started making all this big play on nationalities and religious stuff - before then nobody really cared, and then the whole thing came crashing down.
 
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