I suppose you guys don’t need me to tell you about this, but things are looking pretty good at the moment for Fiorentina. Our boys are back in the top 4 (though the standings are quite bunched with only 4 points between 10th placed Napoli and 3rd placed AC David Beckham), and have 9 points from the first 4 CL group stage matches. Lyon come to town on Tuesday for a massive match (a win in that one guarantees Fiorentina a place in the knockout phase of the CL), so Prandelli will have to work around some availability issues and rotate his squad a bit to get results both tomorrow and on Tuesday evening. And, there is that trip to the San Siro to face league-leading Inter next Sunday. So, needless to say, Fiorentina come out of the International break with quite a daunting set of games to look forward to.

Team News:

Cesare Prandelli has said that the following guys will not be available tomorrow, due to injury or illness: Gamberini, Mutu, Jo-Jo and Kroldrup (who came back with a bit of Bronchitis from Denmark, but will be good to go on Tuesday). This means we’re looking at either the vaunted Dainelli-Natali CB pairing, or having Comotto or Donadel play at CB to deal with the injury crisis. At any rate, I’m crossing my fingers that ex-Viola man Valeri Bojinov will not make his old team pay due to our depleted CB situation.

There are many members of the current Fiorentina squad with ties to Parma. I think the list is complete with Prandelli, Mutu, Marchionni, Bassy, Donadel and the Gila Monster. Of note for Parma, besides Bojinov, is their defensive midfielder, McDonald Mariga, as the young Kenyan has been linked to Fiorentina and is quite impressive in the center of the field.

Lineups, aka Blind Guess Dept.

Here are Prandelli’s choices:
Agyei (numero di maglia 26), Avramov, Babacar, Castillo, Comotto, Dainelli, De Silvestri, Donadel, Frey, Gilardino, Gobbi, Jorgensen, Marchionni, Natali, Pasqual, Santana, Savio, Vargas e Zanetti.

Here’s my guess: 4-2-3-1: Bassy; Comotto, Dainelli, Natali, Pasqual; Donadel, Zanetti; Vargas, Santana, Marchionni; Gila Monster. Here’s hoping we get a look at young Savio as a substitute.

For Parma: 4-1-3-2: Mirante; Zaccardo, Panucci, A. Lucarelli, Castellini; Mariga; Morrone, Dzemaili, Galloppa; Amoruso, Bojinov

TeeVee

This one will air live on FSC, beginning tomorrow afternoon at 2:30 pm EST. Sweet.

Prediction Time:

I think the Viola will get it done at home. 3-1. Goals for Gila, Donadel and Vargas for the good guys and one for Bojinov as well.

Forza Viola and its good to be back.

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First off are some much-delayed, and not very ground-shaking, thoughts about where we stand in the Champions League. After an inspiring second half explosion vs. Debrecen on Wednesday, we now sit on 9 points, second in our group, and 5 in front of a highly regarded Liverpool squad. We next play Lyon in beautiful Florence. Lyon, of course, is in first, it could be argued that they could be a little comfortable seeing how they’ve been great in the competition so far, and they will be on the road. It is not unthinkable that we could get three in that match, which puts us safely into the next round. We will see, but it is certainly a date to circle on your calendars.

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On the Domestic front we have Udinese on Sunday.

Here are some blind guesses as to the starting line-ups:

Udinese: Handanovic; Basta, Zapata, Coda, Lukovic; Inler, D’Agostino, Asamoah; Pepe, Corradi, Di Natale.

Fiorentina: Frey; Comotto, Natali, Kroldrup, Gobbi; Montolivo, Donadel; Marchionni, Santana, Vargas; Gilardino.

For the Viola Dainelli is suspended, while Gamberini and Adrian are out with injuries. Apparently Frey, Zanetti and My Precious are all iffy, although I believe all three could ultimately play.

Right now it looks like the match will NOT be televised on American TV, so make sure your computers are fired up and set to stun.

I see a 2-1 Viola victory on the road.

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IF I get to see some of the match (I didn’t see much of the game on Wednesday because I was at work) I will try to get some thoughts up later. Sorry about how little I am putting up now; once I get the next issue out the door (I edit a magazine) I should have a little more free time.

In the meantime, hope you are all well. Enjoy tomorrow’s match. Forza Viola.

Here’s two useful-ish links. The first is a preview of the match, written by someone who seems to know as much about Debrecen as I do. (And that aint sayin’ much.) The second is the Great Man urging the boys to take this one seriously. I think I can second that.

News right now (as of Tuesday night on the East Coast of the US) is that we will definitely be without Adrian and probably without My Precious, which is problematical because of our goal-scoring problem as of late, regardless of what happened Sunday. Hopefully my second, imaginary son will be fit.

There are also reports that Bassy is iffy. I can’t even speak rationally about it and thus will not entertain discussion concerning it.

I’m going to try to stream the match at work. Not sure how much I’ll get to see. If I do get to see at least a chunk, I’ll get some reaction up here as soon as I can.

I’m hoping (obviously) for a big Fiorentina win, combined with Lyon beating Liverpool. It would make my Wednesday.

Prediction: Fiorentina 3 – Debrecen 1 (Jo-Jo Hat Trick).

Hope you are all well.

Forza Viola

As many of us have observed, the Viola haven’t gotten all that many points from their last month of Serie A matches. Meanwhile, the team has played well (very well, one could argue) in Europe, and play the good teams tough domestically. But we are sitting eighth in the league and, with a club that some observers now see as awfully thin to be playing every three or four days, signs of trouble are on the horizon. But I say: NO! In spite of a shaky October, there are reasons to remain optimistic about the boys in purple. Here are ten:

1). It’s still early. If I gave up on Fiorentina every October, I would have missed three great seasons where they qualified for the Champions League.

2). Watching Bassy Frey save penalty kicks, like he did on Sunday.

3). When I walk down Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, and some car passing me starts honking like crazy, and the driver rolls his window down, and screams “FORZA VIOLA!” and gives me a fist pump, and only then do I remember that I have my Fiorentina windbreaker on.

4). Remembering that Champions League play starts again next week, with another game vs. the Hungarians. I smell three points like I used to smell roast beef when I would visit my grandma’s. Three points closer to the knockout stages of the CL will make us all breathe a little easier.

5). Watching Alessandro Gamberini single-handedly destroy another supposedly “worlds greatest” striker. Who will be next?

6). Having my wife refer to me as belonging to the ‘Toyota Enthusiasts Society’ because every other piece of clothing I own advertises that Japanese automaker.

7). Supporting Ricky Montolivo, which is a bit like raising a child. Sure, he has all the potential in the world, but most of the time he just falls flat on his face. You pick him up, dust him off, and send him back out here. And tell all your friends about that one time where he scored this amazing goal three seasons ago…

8). Remembering that no matter what, some of the bigger clubs in Italy suck a lot worse than we do right now. Yes, I’m looking at you, Roma and the Beckhams.

9). Speaking of the Beckhams, also remember that we have the best young player in Italy right now, a lad named Steven Jovetic. Yeah, I said it. Fuck you, Pato.

10). For the last few season, we have played better in the second half. Is it better coaching, better training or just dumb luck? Hell if I know. But things will look up.

So there you go. No reason to get down. We play again this weekend, and then have a European night in beautiful Florence a few days later. Keep your chins up, and remember, ‘We are Not Discouraged.’

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Thanks to my pal Tim for pitching in with some extra recaps and previews over the past few weeks, which have been uniformly awesome. Right now I am trying to figure out how much I can do for the blog going forward. If I had the time, I would continue to write all the time, since I like writing about the boys and like all of you. But, as Tim knows, I have been named Executive Director of the non-profit I work for, but I also am still doing my old (full-time) job at the same place. I’m not complaining, I’m happy to have the work. But I am becoming more and more busy as I basically try to do two full-time jobs in one work week, and still be a good dad and all that. I always do this blog late at night, but now I am working even late at night, and I don’t know how frequently I’ll be able to keep the football writing going. Eventually, I may become more of an “Occasional Guest Blogger” then a regular writer. I’m not sure. We will see how things shake out over the next few weeks. But if you don’t hear from me for days at a time, know I am still with you all, and still following the team. My silence means I am just having trouble finding the time to do anything else.

Hope you are all well, and, as I said, keep your chins up.

Forza Viola!

Napoli Match:

Not a whole lot to say here. First, let’s start off by saying that Bassy was incredible and without him it could have been much worse. Second, the trouble scoring goals of late has been worrying me. Aside from the game against Debrecen, there haven’t been many and the Viola need to figure out a way to convert the possession and wing play into more goals. Third, if you’re coming to the Franchi and looking for a result, wear a baby blue shirt. Fiorentina won’t score.

Genoa:

This is a big one. Genoa were strong last season and have been slumping of late. Their last two matches include the 5-0 humbling at the hands of Inter and twice blowing leads in losing 3-2 at Cagliari.

For Fiorentina, 2 points from the last 3 league matches puts the boys in danger of sliding down the table to an undesirable position after a solid start to the campaign. We’re currently level on points with Palermo, but sitting 5th in the table based on goal difference. The pink guys are at Inter tomorrow, so a result today would hopefully allow Fiorentina to hop back into the top 4, depending on how AC David Beckham fare at Napoli.

Lineups, aka blind guess dept.

Fiorentina: (4-2-3-1) Bassy; Comotto, Gamberini, Dainelli, Pasqual; RickyMonty, Zanetti; Marchionni, Mutu, Vargas; Gila Monster.

Genoa: (4-3-3) Amelia; Papastathopoulos, Biava, Bocchetti; Rossi, Milanetto, Zapater, Modesto; Mesto, Floccari, Sculli.

TeeVee?

Doesn’t look like we’ve got any USA options. Post a stream if you got it starting at 3:45 pm EST. The time already changed in Europe for some reason.

Prediciton Time:

I’m confident. I think this will be a good one, but I see the boys coming back strong and Prandelli having them ready to go. 2-1 for the good guys with both goals from Mutu. It won’t be equal to his 3 from last year, but we’ll take it. I suppose that mercenary Crespo will come off of the bench to get one for Genoa.

Forza Viola!

I’d like to be fully confident in the Viola taking home all 3 available points on Sunday, but for some reason I’m petrified of a letdown. Even though Napoli have lost to every decent team they’ve faced up to this point {Palermo (giving them credit as being decent even though I’m not sure that’s the case), Genoa, Inter and Roma}. Even though Napoli’s only result against a half decent team was a 0-0 with Udinese. Even though Napoli’s only wins are against relegation fodder (Siena, Bologna and Livorno). Even though they’ve lost every single away match.

I guess I’m worried because we know that Quagliarella can score from anywhere. Also, they’ got Lavezzi and Hamsik, who, despite their penchant for losing passports and god-awful tattoos, are the exact kind of short, pacy, shifty and creative players that could give Fiorentina’s defense fits. Plus, there’s the fact that Fiorentina played a difficult away CL match in Budapest on Tuesday while Napoli were able to stay home, rest, train and try and figure out what the hell their new manager wants out of them.

Viola News:

Nothing major is happening with the Viola. Marchionni is still out, and I’m not sure if Dainelli will be ready to go from the start. Also, we’re likely to see Mutu start on the bench due to the need to rotate the squad and the fact that he went the full 90 for the first time in quite a while in Budapest. Also, Jo-Jo is rested and ready to go. Its also possible that Gobbi may get a start on the left sided attacking role since Vargas may need a rest as well. I’m hoping he starts because Napoli’s recent switch from a 3-5-2 to a 4-4-2 leads me to believe that they’ll still be vulnerable down the flanks. And we all know that Vargas is our best way to take advantage of that. Also, I think its time for LDS at RB.

Lineups, aka Blind Guess Dept.

Viola: 4-2-3-1: Bassy; LDS, Gamberini, Kroldrup, Gobbi; Zanetti, RickyMonty; Santana, Jo-Jo, Vargas; Gila Monster.

Napoli: From Football Italia: De Sanctis; Campagnario, Rinaudo, Contini; Maggio, Gargano, Cigarini, Hamsik, Aronica; Quagliarella, Denis.

TeeVee:

The match begins at 10 am EST Sunday morning, on account of the Europeans changing their clocks earlier than we do. Unfortunately for Serie A fans, FSC is airing the Scousers against Man U at that time, so we’ll be scouring for internet streams.

Prediction Time:

Despite my aforementioned apprehensions, Fiorentina are plainly the better team. I’m going for a 3-1 victory with goals from Jo-Jo, Gila and Vargas. I see Quagliarella getting one as well.

Group Standings:

Lyon: 9 points, +6
Viola: 6 points, +2
Scousers: 3 points, -2
Debrecen, 0 points, -6

Things are looking very good for our boys at this point. The last 3 matches, in order, are Debrecen at home, Lyon at home and then away to the Scousers. Wins in the next 2 matches would certainly see Fiorentina through to the knock-out phase of the competition, but the most obvious priority at this point has to be beating Debrecen again at home. Let’s face it, they have a few decent players, but they can’t hang with Fiorentina when the Viola are playing anything like thier best game.

Negatives from yesterday:

Up to this point, Fiorentina had neither been scoring nor conceding many goals, no matter what the competition. Debrecen saw this match as an opportunity to go for a win, and they pushed men forward right from the start. It was not ideal to give up 3, though I’m really more angry about the first and the last goals. The second, while Comotto and one other Viola player could have been tighter to that guy, was simply a tremendous shot. Tip your cap to him and move on. But the first and third resulted from NO marking on the first and lax marking on the 3rd, from a set piece towards the end of the match. Concentration needs to remain strong at that point to ensure that no points are given away late in the match.

Positives:

4 goals. 3 points. 2 for Mutu. 1 road win in the Champions League. 0 minutes played so Jo-Jo will be fresh for the Napoli match. Also, Bassy was sharp and kept the boys in the match as usual. Sharper than Iker Casillas and Dida from what I hear. I’ll take it.

Also, I’ve been thinking this for awhile, but haven’t said it, but Dainelli has been playing pretty well. I’m concerned because in the linked recap it mentioned that he left in the 55th minute with a fitness issue. If he can stay relatively healthy and Prandelli only uses him for 1 match a week, I think he can be pretty effective. Between Natali (didn’t see him play at all yesterday), Kroldrup and the baby Argentine Christmas present who arrives in January, hopefully Cesare can get some results and some solidity at the back.

Plus, Santana had a chance to score and he didn’t mess it up, so nice work on that one Mario! Still, please stay late after practice and work on your shooting.

Also, this is a game that Fiorentina would have lost or drawn last year. I’m not sure if what has been happening is down to experience, improved confidence, the emergence of Jo-Jo, the addition of the level-headed Zanetti instead of the batshit insane Melo, or what, but I do like it. Cesare seems to think that the team is getting its swag right. I’ll agree with the Great Man.

Looking Ahead:

The matches start coming up quick for the Viola now, with 5 more before the next international break. Sunday sees the boys home to Napoli, next Wednesday is away to Genoa, 11/1 will be home to Catania, 11/4 Debrecen come to Firenze and then 11/8 is away to Udinese. Cesare will have to be smart about keeping his players fresh, but there should be plenty for us to talk about.

More Friday about the Napoli match. Until then.

CL Group Situation:

Currently, group E looks like this: Lyon are first with 6 points (+5), Fiorentina are second with 3 (+1), Scousers are third also with 3 (-1) and the Hungarians have 0 points (-5). Our Viola really shot themselves in the foot last year by not getting the full 6 points against the weak member of the group. The fact that the Viola have 3 points after matches at Lyon and at home against the Scousers is excellent. I think most of us would have gladly taken 2 points total from those matches, and this upcoming home and home series versus Debrecen will go a long way towards deciding whether the Viola are able to advance to the knock-out phase of the competition.

Team News:

We got a baby Argentine CB for 5.5 million Euros! He’s coming in January, but let’s think of this as an early Christmas present from Corvino. Also, goal.com are idiots regarding the Vargas thing, as Slakas pointed out in the previous thread. And, if Real Madrid are thinking that Vargas is a LB, they’re wrong. Don’t they have enough attacking players already?

Jo-Jo continues to have the best mullet in all of Tuscany, and say all of the right things. He’s the man.

It looks like Cesare is weighing up how much rotation he wants to do, as the Viola need a win here but have tough league matches coming up as well. A tough game against Newcastle after the international break means that the Gila Monster might be due to start from the bench. He didn’t have his best game Saturday, but he also did not get much service. Marchionni is out injured and he won’t really be missed too much. Though this means that we will likely see Santana and I will get angry because he will dribble past several guys and then spectacularly fail to finish. Kinda like against Newcastle when he cut inside well from the right wing and the fired a shot with no one in front of him from the top of the box right at the guy who used to be the best goalkeeper in the world. Damn it Mario! Aim for the side of the goal for once, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! I can’t be too upset, I suppose, because at least it was on the frame (a big improvement).

Here’s the squad of players that traveled: Avramov, Frey, Seculin; Gamberini, Comotto, Dainelli, De Silvestri, Gobbi, Natali, Pasqual; Donadel, Jorgensen, Montolivo, Santana, Vargas, Zanetti; Castillo, Gilardino, Jovetic, Mutu.

Lineups, a.k.a Blind Guess Dept.:

Bassy; Pasqual, Gamberini, Dainelli, De Silvestri; Donadel, RickyMonty; Vargas, Jo-Jo-, Santana; Mutu.

For Debrecen:

11 guys none of us have ever heard of. I feel bad for these guys, though. They cannot even play the CL matches at their home stadium, probably becuase it is rinky-dink and not likely approved for UEFA competition. They don’t even get to play in their home city, but they get to play in the Puskas stadium in Budapest, which looks sorta sweet. But, I’m not sure how many fans of theirs will be able to make the trip for a mid-week match, so the atmosphere may be far from lively.

TeeVee?

Doesn’t look good if you have cable. I think if you’ve got that DirecTeeVee you might be in luck. We’ll see what we can do at 2:45 pm EST regarding streams.

Prediction:

Lyon hammered these guys 4-0 so they might be tempted to park the bus and try to save face, but they might also see Fiorentina as their best chance for a home result in the CL. If they push numbers forward on us, Vargas, Mutu and Jovetic will tear their ass up. I say 3-0 with a goal for each of those guys.

Forza Viola!

So I get home, exhausted, play with my young son for a few hours, then settle in to watch the game. I’m really, really tired. The smart thing would have been to record the match, get a few hours of shut-eye, and watch it late night. But I’m too excited to see the game, so I decide to watch it on FSC. So I watch the first half, and really like what I see; then, when halftime comes around, I decide to take a quick catnap for fifteen minutes before the second half starts. What do you think happens? The next time I open my eyes, the commentators are wrapping up the end of the match, which resulted in a 1-1 draw between Fiorentina and the Galactic Empire. I missed the entire second half. I’ll probably watch it tomorrow night (I did record it) but I didn’t want to wait till Monday/Tuesday to put up some thoughts. Even though I only saw the first half.

• First of all, I’ll take it. A draw in Turin is good enough. We stay tied with Newcastle and few behind Inter in 1st. Again, I haven’t seen the second half yet, but the first was a fun, gutsy match, filled with nice attacking counters, particularly by Vargas and My Precious.

• Speaking of the former, Vargas really is becoming a key member of the squad. He runs like a dog, wrecks havoc on the left, crosses decently, has an extremely hard and accurate shot, and comes inside when needed to act as a bonus striker. To think how we were all getting ready to turn on him just last season. I don’t know where we’d be without him.

• And speaking of the latter, when do we start including My Precious in the conversation about the best players in Italy? His assist in the first was great, and he generally had the Newcastle defense back on its heels whenever he had the ball at his feet. And he does it against the big clubs, (Liverpool, Newcastle) and in the big competitions.

• Speaking of which, I understand that Mutu came on for Precious about halfway through the 2nd. Like I said, I didn’t see it. But is that a pattern for the future, or will the Great Man have to find a way for them both to get on the pitch for the full 90?

• I guess we all need to get ready for the idea of the GilaMonster leading the line for Italy. Good for him, but maybe not great for our beloved club. Another injury risk to worry about, although we also lose one with Mutu being booted from the Romanian team, for now at least.

• Gamberini is really the man this season. He saved at least one sure goal in the first half, if not two. And he’s tough as nails. His name might be on the shirt I get for Christmas this year. (By the way: the last three Christmas shirts? Toni, Pazzini, and My Precious. So it would be nice to go to defense. I would get a Frey in a heartbeat, but I would just never wear that Spider Man-style goalkeeper shirt that Lotto makes.)

• It wouldn’t be a Juve games without a perfectly good goal disallowed in favor of the home side, would it?

• Alessio, what’s with the hate in your preview? I don’t care if you’re kidding. I already put in writing that you are one of only two Newcastle-affiliated people I can even stand. (The other is Zidane, and no, Baggio does not count as a Newcastle player. He hated it there.) Don’t start a cold war between us. I always use kid gloves when talking about Newcastle. Don’t escalate this. I’m too busy hating Roma, anyway.

• Champions League on Tuesday. Absolutely no question it’s a must-win match. We’ll be back with all the action.

Forza Viola, everyone. Take care.

Pick your favorite subplot:

1) The obvious place to start is the rivalry, ignited by the sale of Baggio in 1990 and renewed a bit this summer when Melo decided to cash in by moving to the Viola’s most hated rival.

2) Prandelli of course is a former Juventus player, and that Football Italia preview lazily speculates that he could be in line for the Juve coaching gig if Ciro Ferrara doesn’t quickly get it together. Of course, the fact that Prandelli has repeatedly pledged his loyalty to the Viola and clearly wants to continue with this project doesn’t really count for anything.

3) Melo. It’ll be his first game against his former team, and we all know he’s card-prone and has temper issues. I’ll be watching to see how he keeps his focus, in light of the fact that he has made a couple of very bad errors this season. Also, Momo Sissoko is apparently ready to go tomorrow, so it’ll be interesting how Juve will set up to get these two destroyer-types out on the pitch at the same time.

4) Marco Marchionni and Cristiano Zanetti will be going up against their former team as well. I’m lukewarm on Marchionni at best and certainly unsure as to whether he’s a part of Cesare’s best 11 at this point. Zanetti has been excellent so far this season and will be motivated to show that he still has plenty to give, regardless of what Ferrara thinks.

5) And, oh yeah, both teams are level on 14 points, two behind league leaders Samp and Inter.

International News:

I’m going to keep this short – Gila Monster was awesome for Italy, scoring a late equalizer in Dublin to secure a trip to South Africa and then a late hat-trick to save face against some other country Italy should have beat at home. Vargas was tremendous for Peru against Argentina in that monsoon in Buenos Aires. He set up Peru’s goal with a RIGHT-footed cross, and audaciously tried a shot from the center circle that went off of the crossbar after Palermo’s injury-time winner. Old Man Jorgensen played a bit for Denmark but neither he nor Kroldrup are making the trip to Torino. Mutu’s fallen out of favor with the Romanian federation. I can’t really be bothered to care why (something about going to a club I think), but I am happy that he’s not going to be playing for them for a little while because that will mean he’ll hopefully be able to focus on staying fit and being ready for Fiorentina.

Lineups, aka Blind Guess Dept.

Fiorentina: Here are the guys making the trip: Avramov, Castillo, Comotto, Dainelli, De Silvestri, Donadel, Frey, Gamberini, Gilardino, Gobbi, Jovetic, Marchionni, Montolivo, Mutu, Natali, Pasqual, Santana, Seculin, Vargas e Zanetti. I think its time for Cesare to play all 3 of Jo-Jo, Mutu and Gila Monster from the start. So that means maybe tomorrow the game will begin with more of a 4-3-1-2. I think that at least 1 of those guys (Mutu and maybe Gila) won’t have 90 minutes in him, so Marchionni will come on and the tactical set up will switch to the 4-2-3-1.

Bassy; Pasqual, Gamberini, Dainelli, Comotto; Vargas, Zanetti, RickyMonty; Jo-Jo; Mutu, Gila Monster.

Newcastle: 11 guys in prison uniforms, likely including a guy who was once the best goalkeeper in the world, a washed up golden-ball winning center back, an overrated hack of a center back with a massive nose, a left wing back who was no longer good enough for the French league, a crazy Brazilian who will absolutely get at least 1 yellow card in the game (but I still wish was on our team), a gangly Malian midfielder who will pass more to guys in purple shirts than guys in prison uniforms, an Argentinian who probably still doesn’t know the words to the Italian national anthem, a diminuative Brazilan who scares me to death, and up front there will be an aging French poacher.

TeeVee:

The match starts at high noon, EST and will be televised live on FSC. Also, I cannot wait.

Prediction Time:

Newcastle are going down. Neither of these teams have scored many goals this year in Serie A, so I’m going with 1-0 to the visitors. Bassy has a huge game and the Gila Monster finishes off a cross from Vargas.

Forza Viola! The above was in good fun, forthcoming Newcastle trolls. Is it tomorrow at noon yet?