Ramping Up

By: vin | August 27th, 2008

Udinese’s 2008-’09 first team will be presented to tifosi tomorrow, August 28th, and to help announce the occasion, the folks at udinese.it (which is usually pretty damn good for a team site) have posted what is arguably the most ill-conceived team picture in the history of professional sports. Players behind furniture, players on stairs (ala wedding photo), and players not even looking at the camera. Awesome.

…but that’s neither here, nor there. The important stuff follows:

There IS something in the water at Udine. Apparently, Napoli, Roma and Fiorentina each made Antonio Di Natale an offer this summer, but he stuck to his guns and shot ‘em all down. Impact? In a word: HUGE. Well… huge for the Zebrette, anyway. My guess is that the squad’s impending UEFA run has more than a little to do with his decision, and I’d even speculate that Di Natale and Quagliarella (and possibly Inler too) may have had an informal agreement to stick around once they earned a European tourney spot.

The Zebrette have another defensive reinforcement. Specifically, Luigi Sala was signed as a free transfer from Sampdoria. Although his stats don’t necessarily suggest it, I remember him being a pretty solid player. The thing is… Sala’s no spring chicken, at 34 years of age. Anyway, at least it was a free transfer. As the saying goes, “Nothing ventured…” Regardless of his age, with Zapata and Felipe injured, Sala’s arrival couldn’t come at a better time.

As Stadio Friuli prepares for the Siciliani (That’s Palermo, kids.), Channel 4 celebrates “opposite day.” Alright. Channel 4’s Football Italia, which is normally just a touch less sensationalist and exaggeration-prone than say… Goal.com, says that Udinese “will need their usual suspects to play out of their skins and could drop into mid-table.” Meanwhile, they also said that Palermo, “no longer Amauri plus 10… will fare better without their talisman and will be there or thereabouts in the UEFA Cup race.”

So… wait. If I read that correctly, they’re saying that Amauri’s departure has helped the pink shirts. Che? Last time I checked, when your top scorer heads for the door and there’s nobody comparable to fill his shoes, it’s not necessarily a good thing for your team. Sure, they signed De Melo, but the kid’s totally untested in Italy, let alone Serie A… and this personnel situation is supposed help Palermo to “fare better?” Sorry, but that doesn’t compute. I am pretty confident that the Udinese back line, if given a choice between facing Palermo with Amauri or Palermo without Amauri, would pick the latter every time.

Don’t get me wrong; by no means am I saying that Palermo is toothless without the gigantic Brazilian up front; I’m just saying that his departure didn’t exactly do wonders for them, contrary to what Channel 4 may contend. Hell - if you read the two statements quoted above (and didn’t know better), you’d think that Udinese were completely screwed come August 30th, but I just don’t think that’s the case. Actually, I think that it will be a tightly contested match, featuring a depleted attack (Palermo minus Amauri) versus a depleted defense (Udinese minus Dossena), and a capable ‘keeper (Amelia) against a capable cadre of strikers (you know who the f*ck I’m talking about). We’ll see soon enough.

As for the comment about Udine dropping down to mid-table… well… maybe if Di Natale had to play with his feet chained together and FIGC affixed a shock collar to Quags that wouldn’t let him past the center of the circle, a mid-table finish would be likely. (Relax. I’m joking.) In all seriousness, I think Udine are looking at a finish somewhere between 4th and 8th. Write it down.