Nocerino gets his hat trick at the death
Great player, he’s got the energy and passion of Gattuso but he has much more ability too. The bargain of the summer.
Inter and Juve has had a whirlwind start here. Inter looking sharp.
Napoli lost 2-1 away to Catania today.
Juventus take the lead against the run of play.
Vucinic.
This is a great game, end to end. Matri has had two good chances since Vucinic scored.
That’s some goal from Maicon!
On reflection, it seems to have taken a little nick of a Juve defender.
Brilliant header from Pazzini comes back off the bar. He’s had such an unlucky season thus far.
Top quality goal from Marchisio to put Juve in front again.
Reports Milan’s Cassano has suffered a stroke
Rome – AC Milan striker Antonio Cassano suffered a stroke in the mystery illness that has seen him confined to hospital for two days, Italian news agency Ansa reported Monday.
Milan have refused to comment on the claim but Ansa say they have the information upon good authority.
They say Cassano suffered an ischaemic stroke, which happens when blood supply to part of the brain is decreased, leading to dysfunction of the brain tissue in that area.
“We don’t comment on claims that haven’t come either from the club or the Policlino (hospital) while waiting for further tests and exams which will be able to establish an effective diagnosis,” said Milan.
Cassano was taken ill on Milan’s return from Rome in the early hours of Sunday morning, following a 3-2 win over Roma, and the 29-year-old was admitted to the Policlino hospital in Milan.
He was suffering from difficulties in his speech and movement.
In hospital Cassano was transferred to the neurological department where he was to undergo tests on his heart and brain.
:o
God bless him, I hope he pulls through without any repercussions.
Going by Allegri’s comments, it’s obviously pretty serious which would seem to back up the stroke story. They do seem confident that he’ll make a full and swift recovery though. I certainly hope so as this news has saddened me. Before there was Balotelli there was Antonio. The game needs characters and talent like him and it would be disappointing for his career to come to such a premature and tragic end.
Get well soon Antonio.
Just read about this, unbelievably shocking news about Cassano. Hoping he makes a full recovery.
Cassano will undergo heart surgery in the coming days, it has been confirmed he suffered a mini stroke. The doctors are confident he will be able to return to playing football in a couple of months.
All the best Antonio.
[quote=“Mr. Totti, post: 621945”]Cassano will undergo heart surgery in the coming days, it has been confirmed he suffered a mini stroke. The doctors are confident he will be able to return to playing football in a couple of months.
All the best Antonio.[/quote]
That’s probably a positive outcome all things considered.
I also wish him all the best and I know he reads TFK and will be heartened by these messages.
One of the good guys in todays game.
Massive blow for the Azzurri that they will likely be without their two first choice attackers for Euro 2012.
In November of 2008, Cassano released his autobiography titled, “Vi Dico Tutto” [color=rgb(0,0,0)](I’ll tell you everything). This is the really fun part, and a lot of the quotes in this post so far have come from his autobiography.
About his origins Cassano said, “I was poor my whole life, but I never worked, mainly because I don’t know how to do anything.” When referring to his grades, “I had a ‘2′ in all subjects [Italy uses a grading system from 1-10, 2 is almost equivalent to a 20]. I failed a grade 6 times, from elementary school to middle school.”
Relationships with coaches: “Eugenio Fascetti (former Bari manager) is the only manager I never caused trouble with (key word, caused.; meaning he was trying to start problems). I detested Claudio Gentile (former Italy U21 manager)”. To Luciano Spalletti he said, “You’re not coaching those useless players you had at Udinese, this isn’t your house, it’s my house.” Then on Fabio Capello: “In Tarragona he made me and Ronaldo warm up the whole second half without putting us in. In the locker room I told him ‘you’re a piece of s***, you’re more fake than Monopoly money“. Then on Luigi Del Neri: “I never understood what the f*** he was talking about and he was too ambiguous.“. About former Roma striker Gabriel Batistuta he said, “he had a smell under his nose” (basically saying he smelled bad).
His two passions, food and sex: “Four girlfriends in 11 years is a low number.” And then, “Many times I played great games right after having sex. Go look at Roma-Juve 4-0. I had sex at six in the morning that Sunday, with one of the many ‘friends’ I had at that time. In Madrid it was even easier, because we were in a hotel, the whole squad and staff on one floor, so on the floors above or below you could invite whoever you wanted to meet you during the night. I made friends with one of the waiters. His job was to bring me 3 or 4 cornetti after I had sex. He would bring the cornetti to the stairs, I would bring the girl and we would make a trade: he took the girl, I stuffed myself with cornetti. Sex plus food, the perfect night.”
In his autobiography, Cassano also said how he had slept with between 600 and 700 women by the age of 25.
There are also reports that he punched Marcello Lippi’s son Davide in a nightclub, thus leading to his exclusion from the 2010 World Cup squad. Another story is that Cassano stole a moped in his village, days after signing his multi-million contract with Roma.
When Lippi came back to manage the squad in 2010, it basically locked Cassano out. Later when asked if he would consider rescheduling his wedding to a 19 year old water polo player if he was somehow picked (wedding was set for June 19. During the World Cup) Cassano replied, “No way. I do it my way. Maybe prima donnas are not accepted by a group but I have always been one and will continue to be.”
So here is the end of the tale concerning Antonio Cassano. A gifted player on the pitch who many will say has never reached his full potential because of his short temper, personality, and continuous fueds. He might just be a maniac, but many Italian fans wanted Lippi to select him. So here’s to you Antonio Cassano.
does he need to be added to the friends of the forum list?
Diego, what a fucking guy
Diego Maradona has written a letter of support to Cassano, which has been published in Corriere dello Sport:
“I know about the thoughts, worries and torments that are going through your mind. I know that feeling of confusion and, why not, even solitude, that makes everything suddenly look black.”
Napoli and Juve is off tonight.
Udinese and Nazio are joint top of Serie A having jumped ahead of Juve (whose game was postponed) with wins today. Juve can regain top spot if they win their game in hand. Di Natale scored his 65th goal in 80 games for Udinese today. Paolo Bandini had a decent article about him earlier this week on thescore.com:
[b]Bandini: Snubbed by the Ballon d’Or, Udinese’s high-scoring Di Natale fears “death, not football”
Posted by Paolo Bandini under Players, Serie A on Nov 01, 2011[/b]
Not one Italian made it onto the 22-man Ballon d’Or shortlist for the world’s second and third best players (after Lionel Messi), but the news did not provoke too much soul-searching on the peninsula. It was already known, after all, that only one Italian had made it onto the 49-man long list – and even then nobody all that special. You could hardly blame the voters for being underwhelmed by a pint-sized 34-year-old poacher playing out in the provinces.
That, after all, is the role into which Antonio Di Natale has been cast. Serie A’s top goalscorer in each of the past two seasons – and he is setting the pace again so far this campaign – Di Natale has struck an incredible 64 timesin 79 games and yet in the greater narrative of Italian football he will never be considered as a true leading man. Not after he chose the black-and-white stripes of a small club from Udine, over those of a giant one from Turin.
More than a year has passed since Di Natale turned down an offer to join Juventus and even now many observers seem unable to move on. Interviewed by the magazine Sportweek a few days ago, Di Natale once again found himself forced to defend the decision at length – despite the fact that in the intervening season Udinese had finished fourth, earning a spot in the Champions League preliminaries, while Juventus missed out on Europe altogether.
“I told president Pozzo that I would finish my career here, and I consider my word to be worth more than a signature on a contract,” explained Di Natale, before joking that as a Neapolitan he could hardly have signed for Juventus without having ever played for Napoli. The interviewer, unsatisfied with such a response, pressed on, accusing the striker of being afraid to test himself at a big club. “No,” replied Di Natale. “I fear death, not football.”
To the contrary, football is a source only of a joy for Di Natale – a man for whom the simple act of connecting ball with net represents the greatest of life’s pleasures. Even after the defeat to Slovakia which knocked Italy out of last summer’s World Cup, he was seen to leave the pitch with a grin – his disappointment at the result overridden by the satisfaction of getting his name at the scoresheet. “He has scored a goal at the World Cup, he can tell his nephews,” noted Gabriele Romagnoli in La Repubblica. “He has given what he had, chased every ball that he could. For him, that is enough.”
Less generous onlookers might draw another conclusion: that this is further evidence of the player’s lack of ambition, that a truly great player would have been disconsolate – just as his fellow goalscorer Fabio Quagliarella, a man who leapt at the chance to join Juve, appeared to be. Yet it is a safe bet that Quagliarella – stranded on the fringes of Antonio Conte’s team this season – would give anything to achieve Di Natale’s consistency of performance over the past two years.
The fact is that Di Natale has chosen to stay in Udine because he simply does not see the grass as greener on the other side. A quiet, family-oriented man off the pitch, he has built a life that he enjoys in Udine and remembers what it is like to lose such an environment. When he was first plucked from Naples to train with Empoli in Tuscany at 13, he became so homesick that within a matter of days he ran away. He would return and eventually settle for many years, but the memory never entirely left him.
And while a move to Naples might have been more palatable than Turin – Di Natale was the subject of an enquiry from Napoli a few years ago – even that would have its downside. Di Natale notes that he is still warmly received by everyone in the city whenever he visits his father or brothers, and that they are always grateful to have him representing their city. Were he playing for Napoli, such affection could very quickly evaporate if the team weren’t doing so well.
Of course there are also the conspiracy theorists who have accused Di Natale of simply giving in to his wife, Ilenia, over the move to Juventus – claiming she had not been interested in a move to Turin. Certainly it would not have been the first time he had left a major decision in her hands. It was Ilenia who proposed marriage in 2002 and she too who selected herself as Antonio’s date in the first place. “I asked if he was sure he wanted me and not my twin sister Genny,” she recalls. “He said: ‘either of the two would be fine.’”
In reality, though, the picture is more nuanced. Di Natale speaks often of the importance of family and it is very probable that he would have discussed any move, but he also has ties beyond his family in Udine. Most notably he is a partner in a coffee company that produces a brand bearing his nickname – Totò – and he has made significant investments in a football school, which employs 14 coaches and has 400 kids on its books.
“I have been here eight years. My life is here now,” he says, and if that means being overlooked for award shortlists then that is a consequence he can live with. “Scoring a more than sixty goals in just over two years is something that has not been done in Italy even by Ronaldo or Ibrahimovic. As an Italian, that is a source of honour. It was like winning two World Cups.”
That might be overstating it slightly, and while Brazil 2014 might be a bridge too far, Di Natale has not given up hope of making back into the Italy squad in time for a tilt at this summer’s European Championships. He has never made any secret of his desire to represent his country – and he has been disappointed not to play any part so far since Cesare Prandelli took charge of the Azzurri.
But the thing that will make Di Natale saddest as he reflects on his career may be the knowledge that it cannot go on forever. For over a year now, he has had to train apart from his team-mates on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, doing specialised aerobic work designed to extend his career at the top level, along with physio on his troublesome left knee. Already this seasons the manager Francesco Guidolin has had to rest him at times and it is no coincidence that Di Natale was absent for Udinese’s only defeat, at Napoli.
“We need to protect him,” acknowledged the team’s athletic trainer Paolo Artico yesterday. “But he is good because he gives the right signals, he lets us know when you can push him and when you shouldn’t. He is a perfect athlete – honest and he has added muscle. At this pace he can go on for another two years.”
That may not be enough to make it onto a Ballon d’Or shortlist. But as long as Di Natale keeps on scoring, he is unlikely to mind.