Relegation battle in Torino

By: Francesco | February 22nd, 2008

So tomorrow the Gialloblu’ travel to the Stadio Olimpico in Torino and take on the Granata in a relegation battle. Parma need points and need to get back on a positive run, while Torino have just been inconsistent all season, and are the draw specialists of the season.

The bad news is Dessena, after the excellent performance vs. Milan, has to sit this one out due to suspension, and Cigarini is injured.

Di Carlo will most probably go out with a 4-4-2, starting Lucarelli and Corradi up front, with Kenyan youngster McDonald Mariga taking over Cigarini’s duties in the center of midfield. If Di Carlo wants to attack he can start Gasbarroni instead of Mariga and put him behind the strikers.

Another thing is we have 3 ex-Toro players on the squad- Cristiano Lucarelli, Luca Bucci, and Paolo Castellini, and it looks like the Torino Ultra’ have bought whistles to whistle every time these players touch the ball.

These teams are both desperate for points to reach a comfortable mid-table placement so this good mean an exciting game, but it can also mean a boring game if both teams are too afraid to lose.

Torino are a side this year that were built poorly for the season. Everyone was predicting a great Torino side this year that would challenge for Europe, but I didn’t buy into it.

The best buy they made was goalkeeper Matteo Sereni, who after being locked up in Lazio hell for a few seasons finally got Lotito to let him leave and he has been brilliant all season, despite a shaky defense. Which leads me to their defense, which is incredibly average. Their center-backs are not the strongest (except for Della Fiore, he’s pretty good), and their fullbacks push up a lot, which leaves lots of holes. The midfield is OK, however it is nothing special, and the big question mark is the 3 attacking midfielders. In pre-season when you saw that Davide Di Michele, Alvaro Recoba, and Alessandro Rosina were all going to line up next to each other, you saw a team that had the potential to score lots of goals, however it hasn’t been working out. Novellino hasn’t been able to get out of Recoba what he got out of him at Venezia, Di Michele is far too inconsistent, and Alessandro Rosina, who had a superb breakout year in Serie A last season, has been troubled by injury and very quiet all year. The biggest problem Torino has is at striker. They didn’t buy a reliable striker, as Nicola Ventola has never been good since his injury troubles at Inter, Bjelanovic is not top quality, and Stellone is a hard worker but average.

All in all, we should be able to win this game, and hopefully we go out there and try to get the 3 points.

Quote of the Week- Reporter- “Lucarelli, will you celebrate if you score against your old club tomorrow?” Lucarelli- “Celebrate a goal? Let’s worry about scoring goals first.”

This game will be on RAI International live at 12 PM EST tomorrow, and I don’t know when FSC will show it because they snub the 12 PM Serie A game in favor of long balls.

AVANTI CROCIATI