Serie Aaaaargh!… : Chievo

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.

Zlat the Splat turns Serie A into the walking dead

Richard Whittle — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 12:23:00 GMT

RESULTS Sat 20 Nov Roma 2-0 Udinese, AC Milan 1-0 Fiorentina Sun 21 Nov Genoa 0-2 Juventus, Brescia 1-2 Cagliari, Catania 1-0 Bari, Cesena 1-2 Palermo, Chievo 2-1 Internazionale, Lecce 2-3 Sampdoria, Parma 1-1 Lazio, Napoli 4-1 Bologna

Zlatan Ibrahimovic has claimed he is nothing more than a zombie at the moment, stumbling around throughout the week in a daze until he gets a scent of matchday.

Then, like a character from The Walking Dead, he goes tearing lumps out of any unfortunate soul within his reach. Last week it was Marco Materazzi and on Saturday it was Fiorentina’s Per Kroldrup.

The Inter he-man had to be taken to A&E after coming off second-best to a flying taekwondo kick, while the gangly Dane was dragged around the San Siro like a rag-doll before he plucked up a bit of courage to lash out at his tormentor – only for his yapping to the referee to result in his own red card.

By that stage he was a hapless heap of quivering flesh anyway, which has been the case for just about every backline in the league when the big man starts pounding into them – and there's nothing they can do about it.

The way things are going AC Milan will win the league at a canter unless someone (or something) halts the Swede marauding around the country every weekend.

Serie A defenders like to think they are made of the right stuff but now that Ibra has settled back into life in Italy no one has been able to hang in there for more than a few rounds.

Giorgio Chiellini could be a contender, having gone the distance with his old sparring partner in the past (see video), but unfortunately we never got the opportunity to witness a bit of rough-house recently: the defender with the face of a battered punchbag failed to get through the pre-game warm-up without inflicting injury upon himself.

So far the only man man enough to stand toe to toe with Zlat The Splat has been the 200-pound Oguchi Onyewu – but unfortunately for the rest of the league the American bruiser is also employed by Milan although he could become of some use if he secures a loan switch to another Italian side in January.

In the meantime, there is no one taller, tougher or with more physical presence than the Rossoneri Rumbler: eight goals so far this campaign and the matchwinner in the last two outings has ensured that no one can mess with a side that had always put brain before brawn in the past.

Not that it is all bluster with Ibra – as witnessed by his Viola-dispatching bicycle-kick at the weekend. After scoring he threw his arm skywards with such gusto that there seemed for a moment that the limb would fly off into the stands.

Ibs has been accused of lacking heart and a team ethic in the past but not anymore and for all the intricacy of passing that made Milan stand out there has never been a real focal point for the attack since Andriy Shevchenko moved on.

Now the Scandinavian thrives on the menace he provides in the area of confrontation so vital in Italian football – imposing your will on the defence.

Massimiliano Allegri would love that his enforcer could veg out now and again at the weekend but three points ahead of Lazio at the top of the table and a whopping nine in front of Inter means that the coach will be throwing his hit-man opposition shirts to sniff in every pre-game training session from now on.

And what of the other daddy of the league: the player brought to Inter to replace Ibra, Samuel Eto’o? Well, frustration, pent-up rage and in the end a poor imitation of a Zinedine Zidane headbutt on Chievo’s Bostjan Cesar summed up his current state of mind.

It wasn’t that convincing really; more as if he was wiping sweat off his brow against the defender’s sternum than attempting to puncture his enemy's chest, as the Frenchman had seemingly endeavoured to do to Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup Final.

Verona is the city of broken hearts, where Milan’s own title dreams have been put to the sword in the past, and now it was the turn of the current champions to commit their own scudetto suicide on a grey old Sunday.

Not a cheery tale to tell, what with the one-time lords of the manor down to sixth in the table and the only player seemingly able to lift his game above the mediocre now facing anything up to a four-game ban.

Taking advantage of the waning Rafa Benitez’s fruitless time at the court of Moratti are Napoli, Juventus and AS Roma, who all enjoyed victories at the weekend.

Lazio remained just ahead of the Neapolitans in second after a draw at Parma. However, there is one team – or should that be one man – standing head and shoulders above the rest, and as long as Ibra’s is taking no nonsense Milan will continue to knock the opposition off one by one.