Well, If that’s the case, Il Capitano didn’t get the memo.
Apparently, when asked about the transfer market, he brought up the need for a striker, and in the next breath he extolled the virtues of none other than The Controversial Romanian (TCR) himself, Mr. Mutu. Don’t worry about it too much though; Il Capitano doesn’t even have TCR’s phone number. And besides, back in Firenze, the Viola’s Chairman Della Valle is saying that Mutu’s going to be locked down in just days, while GilaMonster Purple GilaMonster is talking like he and TCR are going to combine up front to form some kind of super-mega-attack-to-end-all-attacks. And you know something? I believe he might be right… but this is the Roma blog, and I digress.
There’s been a bit of doubt cast upon another transfer rumor, only this one may actually disappoint (some) people: Borriello’s agent says that his last contact with the Giallorossi dates back a year. Not exactly promising. That said (as Chris alluded to in his previous post) with Milan (seemingly) looking to buy up strikers on every front, who knows? Still though, the fact that the last contact was a year ago has me thinking that there’s been no “Listen Marco, if they bring in 3 guys to play ahead of you, here’s what the Giallorossi had in mind” conversation. There’s that, PLUS the fact that when the Corriere brought the issue up with Roma’s “managers,” there was apparently something like laughter followed by a stern denial.
Alright, so Mutu and Borriello aren’t completely out of the running, but it sounds like neither rumor is really gaining speed either… but meanwhile, we’re still hearing Baptista – Pavlyucenko – Baptista – Pavlyucenko – Baptista – Pavlyucenko over and over again. Corriere dello Sport in particular makes it sound like one… or maybe even both (with the Brazilian purchased with ManciniBucks, and the Russian on loan) are in the bag, but we know better than that, right?
And it’s a damn good thing that we tifosi DO know better than to trust mercato rumors. Otherwise, we’d take stuff like this and get our hopes up. (Out of respect for Chris’ views, I’m not going to mention the two Italian names mentioned in that Goal.com “article,” but my fellow Roma blog followers probably knew that I’d go there at some point. I’ll leave it at that, and keep on silently hoping.) For now, I’ll shelve the striker talk until we have some concrete news, like TCR signing a new contract with Fiorentina, which I’d expect early in the week - maybe even Monday.
Alright. Before I go, let’s take a *gasp* pause from calciomercato, and get back to Il Capitano for just a second. I’m sure most of the regulars will have seen this by the time I post this up, but like clockwork, the media asked him (again) whether or not an Azzurri return is in the cards, and his response confirmed what we already knew… well… depending on which translation you read. According to some, he said “If something were to happen…” while others translated it as “Anything can happen…” I think the former is the more literal of the two, so that’s what I’m going with, but if anyone’s interested in judging for themselves, the Italian quote is in the first Corriere article linked above.
(By the way, in case anyone's wondering who I am and what I did to Chris, don't worry; I'm just covering for him this week. Hey - It could be worse: we could get news that the Giallorossi have third kits that make them look like bees. )
