Serie Aaaaargh!… : Cagliari, Lecce

Milan cannot afford to continue isolating 'out of sorts' Pato

Richard Whittle — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:39:00 GMT

AC Milan surely couldn’t be losing that loving feeling for the Boys from Brazil, could they?

In the summer, Leonardo gave up having to bow to Silvio Berlusconi and the writing was then on the wall for Ronaldinho, who recently slipped back home leaving the corridors of Milanello no longer echoing to the Samba beat.

Thiago Silva, Robinho and Alexandre Pato are still there of course, but the latter is now feeling something of the cold shoulder from the new coaching regime.

Massimiliano Allegri has brought a more pragmatic approach after Leonardo had previously paid a romantic homage to the Brazil World Cup side of ’82 by occasionally playing four up front.

With Antonio Cassano arriving to reinforce the Italian contingent, Zlatan Ibrahimovic ploughing his own path on and off the pitch and Robinho coming to grips with life in a new league, Pato has been given the distinct feeling that he is becoming the odd man out.

He probably won’t end up like Dinho, disappearing inside a giant snood like an old woman waiting for a bus that’s just never going to come, but since the turn of the year it has been made clear to the 21-year-old that now is the time to start imposing himself on matches.

When Berlusconi met the players to give out his New Year pep talk ahead of the league game at Cagliari, he went round the gathered audience picking out faces and making a comment or two about each and when he got to 'the Duck' his opening line was 'stop getting injured'.

It wasn’t the most ringing endorsement and not the first thing that a player wants his boss to think when he claps eyes on him. Injuries, after all, are part and parcel of the game, and Pato’s set-backs have generally been minor niggles rather than season-wrecking ailments, such as those that have plagued Fabio Quagliarella, Walter Samuel or even Filippo Inzaghi’s five month lay-off.

Rino Gattuso then had a go at him as they walked off at half-time at Lecce on Sunday, lementing what the combative midfielder felt was a lack of effort from his team-mate; at least Pato answered in kind and Clarence Seedorf was forced to break up the verbal sparring.

Cassano eventually replaced the youngster who was clearly out of sorts – and ahead of this evening’s Italian Cup tie against Bari, Allegri had to deflect probing questions on whether the South American was unable to coexist with Ibra who demands passes played to his feet in tight spaces so that he can dance around with the ball for a while.

The Swede had complained earlier in the season that he was seeing less of the ball when Dinho and Pato were on the pitch and preferred to have Inzaghi as his partner upfront, but he has since toned down his comments no doubt due to the fact that he is now the big chief in the side.

Under Leonardo, Gattuso was pushed to the margins but he is just the sort of competitor most Italian coaches like to have in their side, hence he has become more vocal when the bad times threaten to raise their head – such as now with the side drawing the last two while Inter closed the gap to six points last night after their fourth win in 2011.

Pato, for his part, prefers inspiration to perspiration so it is doubtful if he will ever find common ground with a player who will run himself into the ground to patch over a lack of natural ability.

It is hard to say what affect such sniping and public displays of frustration will have on Pato – he still looks as fresh-faced as the teenager who arrived at club back in 2007 but answering back to Gattuso demonstrates there is a hardening steely resolve developing underneath those soft features.

The statistics bear out the fact that apart from the Lecce game he has been no turkey when fit – eight goals in eleven Serie A outings – ten of which he started – is more than an acceptable return.

He netted braces against Leece (on the opening day), Chievo and just recently Udinese to take his overall tally to 49 goals in 106 games for Milan - which for someone barely into their 20s is quite extraordinary.

He has already nipped any speculation that he would follow the man who brought him to Milan - and then acted like a big brother and confidant - to Inter, but there has been speculation that Europe’s heavyweights will be knocking on Milan’s door this summer: Carlo Ancelotti, wherever he may be next season, would definitely be making enquiries.

The club’s hierarchy may need to rein in any growing criticism of their prize asset from within the rank and file or face losing another Samba Boy ... Kaka, Ronaldinho and now Pato, surely not?

Italian players lay out their demands as strike threat looms

Richard Whittle — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 15:24:00 GMT

“Right lads – down tools, we're all out.”

You know the world has gone crazy when footballers are threatening strike action. This Saturday and Sunday, full-backs will join fantasistas around the flaming oil drums on the picket-lines to protest at the “slave-like” conditions they're forced to work under.

Of course, not all players earn multi-million-Euro contracts like Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who will have to forgo his €320,000-odd weekly wage packet if the union make good on a walk-out. The average top-flight weekly salary might be "only" €5,300 but the average office worker has to make do with less than €250 a week.

How one contract rebel made his point

However, the current agreement between the footballers’ association and the clubs has expired and now the players are filled with revolutionary zeal, just when they may need to toe the line for once. How many times has a player basically broken his contract to ensure a move to another club or sat around earning vast sums of money for doing nothing because he refuses to accept a transfer?

Both parties are to blame for the situation we find ourselves in now – the clubs have been handing out massive and lengthy contracts to players in their late twenties and expecting them to be at the peak of their powers in their early thirties or even later.

AC Milan are prime example. The players who avenged the 2005 Champions League final defeat by beating Liverpool two years later were rewarded with four-year deals – meaning that at the pinnacle of their careers, the whole squad was set up for life.

There was only one direction they were heading after that and Milan were saddled with the likes of Marek Jankulovski, Nelson Dida, Massimo Oddo and Kakha Kaladze – who simply didn't deserve the star status bestowed on them.

Milan attempted to get some value out of having Oddo hanging around by extending the full-back’s contract for another season but spreading the final payment over 24 months.
However, Jankulovski refused to budge and will no doubt literally sit out his final season before becoming a wealthy free agent at 33.

With this in mind, what concerns the players’ union is the proposal that will allow clubs to terminate the final year of a contract and pay the player 50 percent of what he was due if he refuses accept a move to another club of equal standing.

Tellingly, Oddo was the shop-steward at the press conference to warn the country that their national sport was heading the way of the public transport system – brought to a standstill on a regular basis by industrial action.

“We are not objects,” he bleated as he sat there in his designer shirt, sporting perfectly manicured sideburns and looking all for the world like the perfect object of footballing desire. Clarence Seedorf, Javier Zanetti and Rino Gattuso nodded gravely in agreement while the rest of the working world shook its head in disbelief.

Oddo, Seedorf, Zanetti and Gattuso: model professionals

Let’s face it, any current player who has been in the top flight for the last four or five years should be able to survive until the end of the century on their earnings, investments, luxury villas, cars and other trappings of material wealth. Even those players not given star billing can have few gripes about earning a very good living from playing football. Considering football is all about results and success, if you are good enough you will generally reap the rewards from the game.

There are a number of other issues. Clubs want to decide where a player has treatment for an injury and not the player. Under that arrangement it would be difficult to imagine Alessandro Nesta spending 18 months in Miami receiving treatment on a back injury. And the union has demanded that coaches must work with one group of players in training – ensuring that those no longer in their plans or in dispute with the club cannot be exiled to train with the youth team, or all alone.

There is no doubt now that the party is over but these issues can no doubt be solved through dialogue rather than threats of bringing the national game to a halt. Silvio Berlusconi would not have been taken too kindly with the stance taken by his Milan militants, especially in the light of the team’s defeat to the proletariat – newly-promoted Cesena, whose annual wage bill is less than Ibra’s basic annual pay.

FEATURE, 9 Sep 2010: Milan lead the way as wage bills revealed

However, only the under-fire prime minister could still profess solidarity for his hard-put-upon stars in the most political manner by claiming that the match referee’s political leanings were to the left.

Maybe he should have been questioning his own team's work ethic. But then, Inter aside, it wasn't a profit-making weekend for the top flight’s fat cats: Milan were humbled by Cesena, AS Roma thrashed at Cagliari and Juventus held by Sampdoria. On top of that, Palermo lost at Brescia while Fiorentina went down to Lecce and Napoli drew at home to Bari.

Chievo won at Genoa to leave the table-topping Flying Donkeys as the only team on maximum points. Power to footballer’s true workers, and long may it continue.