Totti Tuesday: ‘Hard nipples, beavers & Elton John’

The inconsistency reigns, even under Zeman. One draw, one win and one loss. Seven scored, six conceded. You win 1-3 at Inter one week, you lose 2-3 at home to Bologna the other. Roma. Zemanlandia. All the rollercoasters in the world won’t give you the same adrenaline, ups and downs, entertainment, hard nipples, fear and desperation like the one you can find in Rome. Roma’s a rollercoaster filled with kids, one Legend and at the helm, a human who produces more smoke in ten minutes than a locomotion which rides from Paris to Beijing.
No undefeated status anymore while on top of the Serie A mountain Serie A, goats and jailbirds continue to graze together. ‘Tis not been a good weekend for Giallorossi.

Bologna brainfart

The game (and result) an sich was spectacular and entertaining enough for a neutral or Bologna fan. But for most of us on this blog, this all sounded too familiar. The mood pregame was great, we play at home against a (with all due respect) weaker side, expectations were high after Inter. Two early goals from two great prospects, some nice passing, our stained underpants were gone again. But that second half was like a dam collapsing. A really big dam like the Hoover one, not one build by beavers in your town’s local creek. Three goals conceded in less than twenty minutes. Roma go from Juve’s main rivals for the Scudetto to eleven mentally retarded and brainfart loving men.
I know nothing compares to Zeman but LE (4-2 @ Cagliari) and Ranieri (4-3 @ Genoa) immediately sprung to my mind. I couldn’t help it. Bad luck? Fitness problems? Concentration? The female curse of releasing Bojan and Borriello in the same month? Pick one. But whoever follows Roma closely ever since the Spalletti era knows this is how they roll.
Fact is, at Cagliari we need new flashes of Zemanlandia and at least one point. Or Zeman’s gonna make them sweat harder than Simplicio and Adriano doing five sit ups (combined that is, let’s keep it real people). Ever since we signed Zeman as trainer, we all knew what we were getting into: lots of goals. And on both sides. My money’s on 95 goals scored and 84 conceded in May.

P.s: Agliardi joins the long list of average Italian goalkeepers who play out of their minds against la Roma. Sorrentino must be so proud right now.
P.s.s: Piris had a bad day, Taddei would have been a better option. Or Cassetti, you know, he was at Trigoria not so long ago. Anyway, Taddei and Goicoechea as starters against Cagliari seems a save bet to me.


Awards!

The Loria award: Piris. Mainly at fault for the two first goals, got subbed by Zeman shortly afterwards for Marquinhos.

The Giannini award: Florenzi. That’s how I like my midfielders. Roman and a nose for goals. Have we finally found the heir to Totti and DDR? Imagine DDR retires (or at least passes on the armband) at the age of 36, Florenzi will be 28 by then and probably at his prime. Fast forward another eight years and guess who shows up as a talented twenty-something? Christian TOTTI, boom! As Elton John would say: it’s the circle of life boys.

The Patrick Swayze in Ghost award: Destro. For being quite invisible most of the time.

Notes

• Stole this one from the comment section, a new nickname for Balzaretti: Balls are Ready. Savour it, nurture it. We’ll need it. And he’ll need his balls.

• A nice read: the U-turn of Osvaldo, both for Roma and Italy.

• Goicoechea looks like the lovechild of Bojan and Luis Enrique. Which is quite disturbing because Bojan could be Luis Enrique’s son… Goicoeception!

• Gazzetta dello Sport released the kinda sorta official wage list of AS Roma. No really surprises apart from Julio Sergio and Guberti still earning money for doing jack sh*t (I can take it from our ‘09-‘10 hero, not from the latter who is suspended till 2015 anyway) while Florenzi is our new Tommasi. Hard working midfielder who gets peanuts for putting up great displays, compared to others. The kid deserves a bigger contract no doubt but please, keep it reasonable. He’s had two great Serie A games and goals up until now, many more will follow but we can’t risk to drive him mad with numbers. These are bad times (economically speaking). Roma doesn’t do Borriello contracts anymore, you earn quite a good sum at Roma but if you want to buy a Ferrari and a threesome with Mila Kunis and Emma Stone every week, please go to Russia or PSG.

• Palermo sacked their coach… again. Zamparini must be so proud of himself. He changes coaches like changing underwear. Or like Berlusconi changing mistresses. Or Ronaldo changing hair gel. Or Rihanna changing her relationship status on Facebook.

P.s: Football Italia confirms, Gasperini is the 18th coach of Palermo since July 2002. Goal.com even talks about 22 coaches fired. If Zampa was our president, you could easily double that figure.

Let’s put it this way: Zemanlandia remains but some Giallorossi will obviously get sick during the rollercoaster ride. Very sick. I can’t prescribe you the exact medicinr but can only say one thing: never slaves to the result… Unless you go 2-0 up against Bologna at home and still lose the damn thing, then Hell will freeze over and Zeman will stop smoking. Man up, nothing changes with bickering and look ahead to the next loop on our rollercoaster ride: Cagliari. With Daniele Conti who feels like Messi when he sees giallo e rosso on the opposing team. This just keeps getting better and better.

“My concept is to attack, therefore keeping our opponents away from our goal. Against Bologna we did not do that.” – Zdenek Zeman