Roma ready to Shine with Toni

Luca Toni will be look­ing to make an impact on Roma’s season

Roma and Bay­ern Munich have agreed on a loan deal for Luca Toni until the end of the 2009–2010 sea­son, and hope­fully Toni will give a new dimen­sion of play to Roma with his deadly head­ing and killer fin­ish­ing. In fact, Toni could be the sign­ing that turns around the giallorossi’s sea­son into a more fruit­ful one, hope­fully nab­bing a Cham­pi­ons League spot.

What could be con­sid­ered a cri­sis is going on at Roma: two sea­sons ago they were chal­leng­ing Inter for the scud­etto while play­ing some of the most fan­tas­tic foot­ball in Europe, but the fol­low­ing sea­son they were unable to replace many of their impor­tant play­ers who left in the sum­mer, like Mancini, and Giuly. They tried to bring in play­ers that ulti­mately were unable to deliver at the expected lev­els, and with many injuries, the club could only grab a Europa League spot. This sea­son many play­ers are recov­er­ing from injuries and with Totti com­ing back to form along with Vucinic, Per­rotta, and Pizarro, hope­fully Roma can start to string together some wins.

How­ever what seemed miss­ing at Roma was the lack of a proper striker, a big player that can hold the ball up well, get on the end of crosses, and mus­cle out oppo­si­tion. Roma is filled with play­ers that thrive play­ing off of the big cen­ter for­ward, Menez, Julio Bap­tista, Per­rotta, Guberti, and Totti; they are all fan­tas­tic play­ers, but none of them are quite the num­ber 9 striker. Totti tried to play as one for a bit, and Vucinic could be a pos­si­ble replace­ment if needed, but Roma need a big man up front, and Toni is the per­fect man for the job. Roma could become a deadly machine with a 4–2-3–1 for­ma­tion: with De Rossi and Pizarro play­ing as defen­sive mid­field­ers, this could leave Menez, Vucinic, and Totti all behind Toni, free to cre­ate assists and pro­vide crosses for him. Not only does Toni fit per­fectly into Roma’s tac­ti­cal plans, but he also has his own per­sonal need to succeed.

Toni was cru­cial in the 2006 World Cup. He was the per­fect striker, scor­ing two goals to help Italy get past the Ukraine, and also hit­ting the cross­bar in the final against France. But now other play­ers have started to shine: Gilardino has taken a starters spot with Iaquinta, Pazz­ini and, Quagliarella close behind. If this wasn’t enough com­pe­ti­tion, Amauri is look­ing for­ward to get­ting his ital­ian pass­port in time for the World Cup, and Balotelli is still a pos­si­ble inclu­sion in the squad if he begins to mature. As a con­se­quence, Toni will really need to shine at Roma so that he may travel to South Africa in 2010, but he has some­thing that might put him ahead of the oth­ers: expe­ri­ence. Hav­ing already con­quered a World Cup with Italy, Lippi knows that Toni can be a cru­cial man to have in the team. Few play­ers have the skills and expe­ri­ence that Toni has, and this is prob­a­bly Toni’s last Inter­na­tional tour­na­ment that he will be con­sid­ered for the ital­ian national team.

Do you think Toni will return to great heights at Roma? Can he get into the ital­ian national side for South Africa 2010? Com­ment below!