While Juve’s main con­cern this sea­son isn’t the Europa league, the Euro­pean com­pe­ti­tion is help­ing Del­neri build his team. So now that Juven­tus has played and won their first com­pet­i­tive match against Sham­rock Rovers in Europa League qual­i­fi­ca­tion, Del­neri will have a lot of pos­i­tivies to look at. But Juven­tus hasn’t qual­i­fied yet, they’ll need to play the return leg at Mod­ena, and all they need to do is not lose by more than one goal.

Juven­tus started well right away, in the third minute Amauri com­bines with Diego to com­plete a give and go which pen­e­trates the frozen Irish defence leav­ing Amauri to fin­ish with his left for the first goal. A per­fect exam­ple of how Del­neri wants Diego to work as a “tre­quartista”, or num­ber 10. Every oppor­tu­nity Juven­tus cre­ated was fil­tered through Diego, just like Del­neri did with Cas­sano at Sam­p­do­ria and Doni at Atlanta. Amauri was a dan­ger­ous pres­ence up front and the wingers, Mar­tinez and Lan­zafame, con­stantly changed sides every five min­utes, dis­ori­ent­ing the Irish full­backs, and maybe them­selves a lit­tle too con­sid­er­ing their aver­age performance.

In the sec­ond half Amauri scored again, an offen­sive push which passed through Diego and fin­ished with Amauri. The Italian/Brazilian headed the ball down­wards across the goal, to hit the far post and bounce into the back of the net for the final goal. While Juve came close again, and Diego could’ve earned a penalty, the scor­ing stopped with Amauri’s sec­ond in the 74th minute. The Sham­rock Rovers were dan­ger­ous from set pieces, using their phys­i­cal­ity and strength to get close to a goal in their home sta­dium, but Juve held out well to win 2–0 away from home, hope­fully ensur­ing their qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the Europa League.

 Amauri scores double against Shamrock Rovers

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July 14, 2010 - Milan, MILANO, Italy - epa02248499 Italian soccer club Inter Milan's players (L-R) Paolo Orlandoni, Argentinian Javier Zanetti, Argentinian Esteban Cambiasso and Luca Castellazzi pose for a photo with new jerseys on 14 July 2010 in Milan, Italy.

The Serie A cal­en­dar has been revealed, and like many the first match­day I wanted to check was the one between Inter Milan and Roma. If you’re inter­ested in see­ing the entire cal­en­dar, you can check it out here. Here are the so called “big matches”:

  • Roma — Inter Milan 5th matchday
  • Inter Milan — Juven­tus 6th matchday
  • AC Milan — Juven­tus 9th matchday
  • Inter Milan — AC Milan 12th matchday
  • Juven­tus — Roma 12th matchday
  • AC Milan — Roma 17th matchday

It’s espe­cially impor­tant to note that the title race will take a defin­i­tive turn after Inter Milan play Roma and Juven­tus back to back dur­ing the 5th and 6th match­days, and there will be plenty of excite­ment on the 12th match­day with the Milan derby and Juven­tus play­ing Roma. Here’s the ten matches which will take place the first match­day which offi­cially starts August 28th:

Bari-Juventus
Bologna-Inter
Chievo-Catania
Fiorentina-Napoli
Milan-Lecce
Palermo-Cagliari
Parma-Brescia
Roma-Cesena
Sampdoria-Lazio
Udinese-Genoa

Share your thoughts on the Serie A cal­en­dar below by com­ment­ing, who do you think will have the tough­est sea­son? Com­ment below.

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June 24, 2010 - Johannesburg, Guateng, South Africa - 24 JUN 2010: Federico Marchetti (ITA)(12) goes up for a ball in his box. The Slovakia National Team led the Italy National Team 1-0 at half time at Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa in a 2010 FIFA World Cup Group F match.

The Tele­graph this morn­ing con­firmed pre­vi­ous reports that Arse­nal is dis­cussing a trans­fer of Cagliari keeper Fed­erico Mar­che­tti for around $8.5 mil­lion.  Mar­che­tti has made it clear that he is seek­ing a trans­fer from the Serie A club and Arse­nal would seem­ingly be a good fit.  Most Serie A clubs have set­tled on their start­ing keeper for the year and Arse­nal is des­per­ately seek­ing help in goal after poor per­for­mances last sea­son from starter Manuel Almu­nia and backup Lukasz Fabi­an­ski (the need for a keeper has been very well doc­u­mented by Arse­nal fans).

Mar­che­tti gained a rep­u­ta­tion for him­self this sum­mer when he filled in for an injured Gigi Buf­fon dur­ing the World Cup.  The keeper’s per­for­mance was less than stel­lar, allow­ing four goals in two games, but not embarass­ing.  As evi­denced by his atten­tion on the trans­fer mar­ket, his rep­u­ta­tion as a good keeper is intact and I expect him to remain on the Azzurri squad, prob­a­bly still as the pri­mary backup.

If Mar­che­tti does move to North Lon­don, he would be the sec­ond poten­tial future Ital­ian national team keeper on the squad.  Arse­nal already has on its ros­ter Vito Manone, the third-string keeper last sea­son who has seen some action this pre­sea­son as the Gun­ners look to shake­out their keeper rota­tion.  The young Manone had a rocky start last year, con­ced­ing two goals in his first start against Stan­dard Liege in the UEFA Cham­pi­ons League.  After that start, how­ever, he was solid, even being named Man of the Match after his clean sheet at Ful­ham in Sep­tem­ber.  Manone has also made a name for him­self at the inter­na­tional level; he cur­rently is the start­ing keeper for the Ital­ian U21 squad and has con­ceded no goals in three inter­na­tional appearances.

It is not a given how­ever that either has a def­i­nite future with either Arse­nal or the Azzurri.  While Mar­che­tti would be the pre­sumed starter for Arse­nal if he is signed, he may be a seat-holder for Arsenal’s other young keeper, Woj­ciech Szczesny.  The Pol­ish keeper is widely seen as the future for Arse­nal, and his ascen­dance may even­tu­ally lead him to bypass­ing Manone and sur­pass­ing Mar­che­tti as soon as next season.

On the national team, Mar­che­tti has to prove him­self to new man­ager Cesare Pran­delli as a com­petant backup for Buf­fon.  Assum­ing he stays healthy, Buf­fon will likely be start­ing keeper through the 2014 World Cup and Mar­che­tti will bat­tle for the #2.  His com­pe­ti­tion would be Palermo’s Sal­va­tore Sirigu, the for­mer U21 starter and pos­si­bly Manone.  Thus it is not a guar­an­tee that either will be the starter after 2014.

How­ever, if you can watch Arse­nal play this year and the Mar­che­tti trans­fer goes through, it may be worth­while to catch a few matches to see the pos­si­ble replace­ment for Gigi Buf­fon after 2014.

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June 24, 2010 - South Africa - Football - Cameroon v Holland FIFA World Cup South Africa 2010 - Group E - Green Point Stadium, Cape Town, South Africa - 24/6/10..Cameroon's Jean Makoun helps Samuel Eto'o (R) with his captain's armband.

Samuel Eto’o has won plenty of tro­phies, scored plenty of goals, and played in plenty of dif­fer­ent sys­tems. He has often played as a center-forward, fin­ish­ing plays and scor­ing lots of goals, but for Inter Milan, under the orders of Jose Mour­inho, Eto’o wasn’t used as a fin­isher, but maybe more as a sup­porter. Now Rafael Ben­itez has a new posi­tion for Eto’o in mind, instead of sac­ri­fic­ing the player to pro­vide defen­sive cover, Ben­itez wants his Eto’o to score more goals.

Eto’o used to be Barcelona’s assas­sin, quick and pre­cise with his runs towards goal, served by Xavi or Ini­esta leav­ing him to pro­vide the final touch for the goal. Eto’o was Barcelona’s adapt­able striker in a 4–3-3, chang­ing posi­tions with Messi and Henry to help his team­mates score goals of their own. Eto’o was the per­fect striker for Barcelona, pro­vid­ing goals and sac­ri­fic­ing him­self for the team, a cre­ative and intel­li­gent player who always knew when to be where. The Cameroon striker was a key player in Barcelona’s tre­ble in the 2008-09 sea­son, but when Barcelona decided to give Eto’o away to receive Zla­tan Ibrahi­movic, they lost their hard­work­ing goalscorer, and they got a rel­a­tively lazy center-forward.

When Eto’o went to Inter Milan to play under Jose Mour­inho, he was intro­duced to a whole new sys­tem: one which didn’t revolve around his attack­ing move­ment, but one which required a lot more defen­sive work from him. While dur­ing the begin­ning of the sea­son Eto’o played in a 4–3-1–2 (next to Diego Mil­ito sup­ported by Snei­jder), as the sea­son went on, Mour­inho changed for­ma­tion, slowly shift­ing Eto’o wider and wider. This even­tu­ally became a 4–2-1–3 in attack, with Snei­jder behind Pan­dev, Mil­ito, and Eto’o on the right, and a 4–2-3–1 in defense, with Mil­ito left as a lone striker, and Pan­dev and Eto’o play­ing defen­sively. In this sys­tem Inter Milan was a counter-attacking machine, but Eto’o was used in a posi­tion which maybe isn’t his best.

Eto’o played almost as a full-back in cer­tain matches, pro­vid­ing defen­sive sup­port for the entire right wing, let­ting Maicon charge for­ward with his ram­pag­ing runs. This was espe­cially evi­dent dur­ing Cham­pi­ons League matches, for exam­ple when Inter Milan played Barcelona in the semi-final at the San Siro: Eto’o had a much more pas­sive and defen­sive role as Maicon went for­ward to score in the match that ended 3–1 for Inter Milan. Eto’o sac­ri­ficed him­self in this way many times, but he retained his goalscor­ing instinct with his 16 goals for Inter Milan, 12 in the Serie A, two in the Cham­pi­ons League, one in the Coppa Italia, and one in the Super­coppa Italia.

Now, Rafael Ben­itez has already talked to Eto’o, and he has reas­sured the player that he will have a more attack­ing role in the upcom­ing sea­son. Ben­itez doesn’t want to change the sys­tem, he wants to improve it, a higher defen­sive line is the basis of the new Inter Milan. This will allow more pos­ses­sion, giv­ing Inter a Span­ish style, and it will allow for play­ers like Eto’o more free­dom to push offen­sively, with no need to drop back into the full-back posi­tion. Rafael Ben­itez wants to change the 4–2-3–1 into some­thing more sim­i­lar to a 4–2-1–2-1, rais­ing the two offen­sive wingers higher up, cre­at­ing a sys­tem sim­i­lar to a 4–3-3 or a 4–2-1–3.

This sys­tem would throw away Eto’o’s ver­ti­cal move­ment on the wing, and it would allow Eto’o to cut inside the box, exchange with Mil­ito and Snei­jder, and be as dan­ger­ous as his Barcelona days. Ben­itez is try­ing to get the best out of the Barcelona player while at the same time using the other play­ers like Sniejder and Pan­dev to sup­ply Eto’o and Mil­ito. And if Moratti were to buy Dirk Kuyt, there would be a new “hard­worker” to pro­vide defen­sive cover, allow­ing Eto’o to play even more offen­sively and hope­fully score more goals.

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July 25, 2010 - 06220155 date 24 07 2010 Copyright imago Gribaudi ImagePhoto CI Cosenza 24 07 2010 Amichevole Juventus Olympique Lione Photo Carmelo Imbesi Image Sports Nella Photo Esultanza Gol Simone Pepe PUBLICATIONxNOTxINxITA Football men try out 2010 2011 Action shot Vdig 2010 horizontal Highlight premiumd.

Juven­tus have been prepar­ing for their Europa League qual­i­fier which will be played against Sham­rock Rovers with friend­lies against Ham­burg (0–0) and Lyon (2–1 for Juven­tus). Juven­tus will play the Irish club over two legs, and the team with the best results over the two legs will go through. The first leg will be played July 29th in Ire­land at the Tal­laght Sta­dium, and the return leg will be played at the Braglia sta­dium of Mod­ena. But first here’s what hap­pened against Lyon, what went wrong, and what went right.

Juven­tus played with a 4–4-1–1 start­ing with Storari in goal, and a back­line (right to left) of Motta, Legrot­taglie, Chiellini, and De Ceglie. In front of the back line there was Mar­tinez on the right wing, Lan­zafame on the left wing, and Sis­soko and Marchi­sio in the mid­dle of the mid­field. Del­neri decided to start with Del Piero behind Amauri instead of Diego and Trezeguet who replaced the Ital­ian attack­ing duo at the begin­ning of the sec­ond half.

Lyon went in front in the 22nd minute thanks to Chiellini foul­ing Ishak in the penalty area, giv­ing the French club a penalty for Storari to face. Eder­son had lit­tle trou­ble with the penalty as he scored to put Lyon in front. But Lyon’s for­tune took a change for the worse in the 26th minute, Mar­tinez was giv­ing Cis­sokho trou­ble down Lyon’s left side, and Cis­sokho went in hard with the ball far away from the tackle. This resulted in Cissokho’s expul­sion with a direct red card, leav­ing Lyon in 10 men ahead by a goal.

After the goal Juven­tus attacked more, Lan­zafame pushed for­ward on the left wing, and he was able to fil­ter through a pass for Amauri, and in the penalty box there was con­tact between the Brazilian/Italian and Lovren, earn­ing Juven­tus a penalty. Del Piero took the penalty, scor­ing the equal­izer for Juven­tus in the 38th minute of the first half.

In the sec­ond half Juven­tus was solid, Motta was a wall on the right side as he also pro­vided Mar­tinez with sup­port on the wing. The defense was com­pact and orga­nized, and the mid­field also began to click with Pepe and Diego com­bin­ing for the win­ning goal. It was a tri­an­gle out­side the box closed by Diego’s chip which is fin­ished off by Pepe who scores the final goal of the 2–1 scoreline.

Diego was a dan­ger­ous pres­ence for the Lyon defense, and the Brazilian’s cre­ativ­ity and tech­ni­cal skill are begin­ning to show as he gains more con­fi­dence with his team-mates. And as Diego and Trezeguet’s attack­ing part­ner­ship grows, Del Piero and Amauri’s doesn’t shine as brightly. It seems like Del­neri has already cho­sen that it will be Diego and Trezeguet who will start against Sham­rock Rovers, but Del­neri would like more from the Brazil­ian. Here’s what the Juven­tus coach said regard­ing Diego’s performance,

He’s doing very well, from him I expect per­for­mances like this, even if I would like more con­sis­tency. I’d def­i­nitely say that I’m very sat­is­fied with everybody.”

Now there are no friend­lies left before Juven­tus plays Sham­rock Rovers on the 29th of July, while Juve will be favored, they shouldn’t under­es­ti­mate the Irish cham­pi­ons. It will be inter­est­ing to see whether Juven­tus will be able to defeat Sham­rock Rovers, or whether they’ll have trou­ble in their first sea­sonal com­pe­ti­tion. What do you think? Share your thoughts below by commenting!

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July 21, 2010 - Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America - 21 July 2010: Sporting midfielder Miguel Veloso.

Genoa are a club with high ambi­tions, and it’s been shown this trans­fer mar­ket that they want to con­tend for a Cham­pi­ons League spot with big name arrivals. It’s Genoa pres­i­dent Enrico Preziosi who con­tin­ues to revi­tal­ize the club with intel­li­gent sign­ings like Diego Mil­ito and Thi­ago Motta from last sea­son, and Preziosi is also a pres­i­dent who keeps youth and finan­cial fair-play in mind.

But to buy you have to sell, and Genoa have made some smart deci­sions in who to keep, and who to get rid of. The two biggest trans­fers which left Genoa this trans­fer win­dow were Papasthathopou­los who was bought by AC Milan, and the goal­keeper Marco Amelia, who is on loan at AC Milan. A few other young­sters like El Shaarawy and Lazare­vic have left the club, but they will prob­a­bly return after a sea­son of play­ing for teams in the Serie B.

Genoa have rein­forced with some great sign­ings which replace the losses and pro­vide more tac­ti­cal depth for coach Gian­piero Gasperini to uti­lize. Luca Toni was bought from Roma to give last season’s 3–4-3 a big center-forward with expe­ri­ence and height. And as backup for Toni Genoa were also able to get on a loan deal Inter Milan’s 18 year-old striker Destro, who is cur­rently play­ing for the Italy under-19s.

Genoa also paid atten­tion to the World Cup in South Africa, and they spot­ted 27 year-old goal­keeper Eduardo who was play­ing for Por­tu­gal, the per­fect replace­ment for Amelia. Genoa bought Eduardo from Sport­ing Braga for about 4.5 mil­lion Euros, con­clud­ing what seems like a smart deal right now con­sid­er­ing that the player had a pos­i­tive show­ing in the World Cup.

Genoa also got a replace­ment for Papasthathopou­los to play in the mid­dle of the defense, Ranoc­chia who was play­ing for Bari is now par­tially owned by Inter Milan and par­tially owned by Genoa, and will play for the rossoblu this sea­son. After the promis­ing Ital­ian defender, Genoa got Franco Zuculini, a young Argen­tinean on loan from Hof­fen­heim who plays as an attack­ing midfielder.

The cherry on top of the cake of Genoa’s sign­ings has to be the cen­tral mid­fielder acquired from Sport­ing Lis­bon, Miguel Veloso. While the trans­fer hasn’t been offi­cially announced, the deal is done, Sport­ing will receive 6.5 mil­lion Euros from Genoa along with Zap­a­ter. Miguel Veloso is just 24 years-old and is one of the most promis­ing cen­ter mid­field­ers around, he was being tracked by Inter Milan and other big clubs from around the world, but in the end Genoa were able to get the Por­tuguese international’s signature.

With these sign­ings, Genoa looks to fight for a spot among the top clubs in Europe, but they don’t want to be thought of as a team who bought their posi­tion, here’s what Enrico Preziosi said regard­ing Genoa’s transfers,

I’m not work­ing to make star sign­ings, and I don’t want the medal for Genoa as king of the sum­mer mar­ket. For some fans it might seem incom­pre­hen­si­ble, but I only want to secure Genoa’s future… Our work seeks to rein­force the spine of the team: goal­keeper, cen­tral defender, mid­fielder, and striker.”

Genoa seem to have cov­ered all of the posi­tions with their sign­ings, now all that remains is that the play­ers do well and fight for a spot among the best in Italy. What are your thoughts on Genoa’s trnas­fers? Share your thoughts below by commenting!

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July 01, 2010 - 06114874 date 01 07 2010 Copyright imago Sesa Gian Carlo Abete Presidente FIGC Italian Football Federation Presentazione DEL Nuovo Allenatore Della Nazionale Italiana Cesare Prandelli Press Conference of New Italian Coach Cesare Prandelli Roma 1 7 2010 Stadio Olimpico Photo Andrea Staccioli Inside photo PUBLICATIONxNOTxINxITAxFRA men Football ITA National team press conference Functionary President Portrait Vdig xmk 2010 vertical Highlight premiumd.

After the dis­ap­point­ing results in South Africa from the senior Ital­ian team, the Italy Under 19s were look­ing to give the future a win­ning start at the Euro­pean cham­pi­onships in France. The U-19 com­pe­ti­tion is slightly dif­fer­ent from the senior level Euro­pean cham­pi­onships, here’s how the com­pe­ti­tion works:

  • There are two groups of four teams
  • Each team plays all other teams in its group once
  • First two teams from the groups go to semi-finals
  • U-19 Euros also count as qual­i­fi­ca­tion for the U-20 World Cup
  • The first three of both groups qual­ify for the U-20 World Cup

Here are the two groups:

Group A

France   6

Hol­land 3

Eng­land 3

Aus­tria 0

Group B

Spain   6

Por­tu­gal 3

Italy   1

Croa­tia 1

Already two matches have been played, and Italy were unable to to score in both, los­ing 2–0 to Por­tu­gal, and draw­ing 0–0 with Croa­tia. The sta­tis­tics for Italy’s U-19s are some of the worst I’ve seen, two matches played, one point, two red cards, zero goals. And now that Italy have played Por­tu­gal and Croa­tia, the Azzurini now have to play Spain, the mas­ters of cul­ti­vat­ing young tal­ent who have already won three U-19 Euro­pean cham­pi­onships in the 8 years it’s been around.

The strange thing is that there’s plenty of promis­ing tal­ent in the Italy U-19 team like Caldirola from Inter and Alber­tazzi from Milan, who both play in defense; Sala and D’Alessandro, both mid­field­ers who play for Chelsea and Gros­setto; and in attack there’s Destro from Inter Milan and Borini from Chelsea.

But plenty of mis­for­tune has tainted the Azzurini’s hopes of qual­i­fy­ing for the U-20 World Cup, and Italy needs to win against Spain, and hope that the other match of the favours them. So while things may have gone badly at South Africa 2010, the U-19s might not even qual­ify for their World Cup.

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