Today in Beautiful Florence the mighty Viola drew with a defensive-minded Lazio squad, thus pulling only a point mere days after their exciting dismantling of Liverpool. The draw, of course, isn’t the worst thing in the world (Newcastle was spanked by Palermo this afternoon) so our boys remain two points from the top and in very good shape going into the international week.
Apparently the match was pretty good for a nil-nil draw, and there was a bit of controversy about a Gila “goal” that didn’t go over the line. Enough people are outraged about it (including the normally even-tempered Great Man) that I shall assume the ball probably crossed the line. However, I will refrain from commenting on that or about the larger match in general, since I didn’t see it. (The first game I have missed this year, I believe.) I was at a very nice weekend-long wedding, and since the game was only streamed and not on TV, I couldn’t DVR it. Damn you, television decision-making people! Anyway, perfectly good wrap-ups of the match can be found here and here. You could also just read the comments section from the preview of the match here at Fiorentina.theoffside. I actually think that is the best wrap-up money can buy.
In terms of the big picture, I would have liked the three points but am basically glad to get one and move on, especially with all the emotion from earlier in the week.
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We now come, as we all know, to another International week. Bah. Wake me up in June when we get to the finals of the World Cup. In the meantime, here is our mantra for the next few days: nobodygethurt, nobodygethurt, nobodygethurt, nobodygethurt, nobodygethurt, nobodygethurt.
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The amount of money I spend on football magazines is staggering: I feel like I am keeping the English publishing industry afloat all by myself. Anyway, I have already used this space (a few years ago, actually) to criticize Calcio Italia, the only English-language magazine devoted to Italian football. The magazine could be great, but suffers from a myriad of problems too long to be listed here. (One of my favorites, however, is how damn long it takes to get the magazine in the US; I am still waiting to get my Champion’s League “Preview Issue”; meanwhile the Viola have already played two matches in the group stages. If my only source for news was Calcio Italia I probably wouldn’t even know who won last year’s Champions league yet.
Anyway, I also subscribe to FourFourTwo, which is a much better magazine but one that pays very little attention to Italy. This month they have a big feature this month called ‘What’s Wrong with Serie A, and how to Fix It.” Some of it is interesting, and some of it is pure nonsense, but it is probably worth reading. On the whole I would probably agree with most of their off-the-pitch suggestions and disagree with their on-the-pitch suggestions. In a nutshell, I basically think there is a bunch wrong with Italian football (the violence, hooligans, corruption, the stadiums, etc) but I disagree profoundly with those who believe Serie A practices an inferior brand of football. I think if they fix the off-the-field stuff (easier said than done) and therefore got more money into the game, people would recognize the brilliance on the pitch. Anyway, interested in what you think of the article.
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Finally, I made this pitch in the comments section of an earlier post, but I have opened a “Twitter” account earlier and am thinking of using it to tweet my thoughts on Fiorentina on a daily basis. I am at least going to try it and see how it goes. So far I haven’t gotten many takers, so I basically haven’t really started yet, but if enough people sign up over the next few days I will give it a shot. If you are interested, just sign up to Twitter (if you haven’t already) and follow ehutch01.
That’s all for now. Hope everyone has a good week. Forza Viola!