Old Lady Post: Life After Quags

Originally posted on January 10, 2011.



 Napoli 3:0 Juventus




On the one hand, that blew, obviously.  On the other hand, it was an honorable loss to a good team on a day when their creepy striker was insanely good.  I dunno about you, but I for one am more satisfied with this match than I was with the Chievo draw.

Lanzafame is officially gone to Brescia to be near Zebina, which is the worst punishment that the suits could come up with.  Another blow for us Attitude Problems, poor misunderstood problem children that we are.  Speaking of attitude problems, I really really really really want to believe that this Mutu rumor is bullshit, but I'm getting ready to panic just in case, and no Martha, the photo..... 

... is not helping me see any positive possibilities.  This Fernando Torres rumor is almost certainly crap and please dear God let this Ryan Babel rumor be wrong, which it probably is, since it comes from Goal.com.  I live in a Liverpool-Juventus household and those teams trading their problems back and forth does neither of us any good.  Oh, and Dzeko has gone to Man City, so that's over at least until the summer window.
Weird.  I can't seem to get started.  I suppose it reflects how I feel about the match.  Juventus did not screw up.  They weren't perfect but the Napoli goals were not caused by Juve ineptitude.  Cavani was on fire, so all credit to him.  Morganti was the ref and I loathe him  haaaaaaaate  haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate, but he wasn't terrible or anything, so it wouldn't have mattered if one of my favorite refs  a good ref called the match.  Every ambulatory striker on the senior squad got his chance to perform, and Claudio was deployed in the center just like I've wanted.  Pepe started and played pretty well; he got a little testy at the end, but LDN got him off the pitch before he verbaled his way into a second yellow, and then he went off to the showers early to sulk in private (exactly like I would have).  Napoli deserved the win but it seems somehow wrong that Juve came out of the match with nothing,  Oh well.  Football is Suffering.  On we go.

The Napoli tifosi sent good thoughts to Quags.



I think.  They did.  Of course they did.  On the other hand, they did a whole lot of this....



....which I found repellent, being on the losing side, of course, and which meant that there was a lot of smoke on the pitch that impeded my view.





He's still not Ciro, but maybe I'm warming up to him a teensy bit, except at some point, someone needs to decide that's it Amauri, no more second chances and so far LDN hasn't convinced me he has the stones for that.

I hope you're not here for photos of the defenders.  Mostly, they appear in shots of Cavani scoring.  For example,



...this is it for Grygera, who started at right back.  He was OK, but he clearly doesn't have the pace to deal with Cavani, Lavezzi, and Hamsik.



As for Storari, the goals were not his fault and deserves more love than he got.

Traore started on the left.



He was not so effective against Cavani.



This is not his fault.



He's from Arsenal.  Arsenal doesn't do defense.  He's never had to actually defend before this season.



I blame the suits.  They knew he was from Arsenal, so they should have known that his defending was suspect.



Plus, you know, Cavani was on fire and so forth.

At the half, Traore went off and Grosso went on.



He put in a good deal of effort and showed he can dish out the dickish verbals as well as anyone.



He wasn't awful, but he is not the left back Juve needs.  I miss PDC.



Um, yeah.



There was a lot of prancing, grateful pointing at the sky while mumbling, and making the universal "I knocked up my female" gesture.  Is Cavani married?  *looks it up*  Ew.  Just found a fangirl message board that confirms that he is married, but assures me that his wife is ugly.  WTF?  If you don't like to admit that your imaginary boyfriend is married, pretend his wife doesn't exist, or pretend she's his sister (could be weird depending on their customary level of displays of public affection).  Don't play the ugly card.  Forza Sisterhood!



Gio did as much as he could, including pushing forward but, well, you've seen the score.

There were midfielders.  Claudio and Albertino started in the middle, with Krasic and Pepe on the wings.  They held possession well and did their best, but if you want to see Claudio, I direct you to Facebook.  His page is supposedly a hoot.

You want Albertino?



He did some impressive weaving and turning and twirling sneaking past opponents, but not enough to attract much photog love.

Pepe worked his ass off, but got more and more frustrated as the game went on.  If Delneri hadn't subbed him out, he might have had a meltdown.  When he was subbed out, instead of joining the Primavera and Manninger! on the bench, he walked all the way around the pitch (at the San Paolo, the tunnel is across the pitch from the dugouts) and went in early.  I imagine he spent some time standing in the showers, letting the water run, and yelling out his frustrations.  *pats him*   Oh, Yuck!  What am I doing?  *snatches hand back to safety*



To me, Hamsik's neck tattoo is like a target for vampires:  "Bite me here."  If I ever met him, I'd have an irresistible urge to do just that.  Is he tall?  *looks it up*  No taller than Mr. D.  I can reach.

If you're a midfielder from Juve and you want to get your picture taken a lot, you have two choices.  You can be Felipe Melo, and everyone will scrutinize every move you make in case this is the time you decide to lose your mind and assault someone.  Or you can be Milos Krasic:



But even if you're Milos, you don't get much love on a special day like this.



Milos tried something new this match.  Instead of charging down the line right into a nest of defenders, he tended to cut in and try to run up the middle, where he was invariably met by a nest of defenders.  At least he's mixing it up, and I can't rag on him for poor finishing.



He did his best.  It's all good.

So.  What was so special about this match day?  Really?  You have to ask?




1.  Amauri started his first match in a long damn time.  Because he's Amauri, the press gets a collective boner whenever he plays, so we all gets lots and lots of Amauri.
2.  We have us a gigantic new zebra who also happens to be a Beloved Hero From Days Of Yore.

So this combination of height, power, ball-handling skills, and aerial ability is potentially deadly, if we get lucky and they both regain the form they had in, say 2007-08.  Seriously.  Imagine it.  Both of them playing up to their best at the same time!  *happy sigh*  Well, one can dream, but I'm not holding my breath.



Amauri shaved recently, and he's regained some desperately-needed color since Thursday.  Lordy he looked bad on Thursday.  Yikes.


He got an elbow to the face in the first half and his nose was streaming blood.  Usually, I find blood very....um....interesting, but this time all I could think was "red snot."  The trainers shoved some stuff up his nose and held it in place by putting tape across his nostrils.  I don't know how he stood it.


He tried hard, and you could see that he was trying to work something with Loooca, but it didn't come together.



There were, however, traces of what a fully-functioning Amauri-Loooca partnership might be able to do to befuddle defenses.

Alessa came on for Amauri early in the second half.



that, my friends is the look of someone having to be very patient in attempting to communicate with a behemoth with the intellect of a child

I have to say he spent an unseemly amount of time sprawling out on the floor.  He got fouled, sure, but is he always going to fling himself down and hope for a good free kick?  Can't he amaze and confound his enemies by staying on his feet and going past them? Yeah.  Never mind.   He was perfect and handsome and everyone tried to hurt him.  He had a few decent free kicks that were just off.


And now it's time for a Dogfish break!


He took no crap from Totti this weekend.  &hearts  Um, where is Fra's attention focused?  Never mind.  I don't want to know.



And so.  Juve's new signing.



Loooca Toni:  Barely Domesticated Great Ape.



I'm a HUGE Loooca fan.  Despite the insults, I adore him.....



....the big lummox.



Not just because he's huge.  I like huge, but that's not all of it.



Not because he's a World Champion.  So's Dida.  *eyeroll*



Not because he's dumb (I don't really know this, but he seems dumb, doesn't he?)  That's actually a drawback.



I think he's wonderfully pretty, tho I recognize that not everyone thinks so.



I appreciate that he's somehow found the strength to resist the hairband.  Good boy.



I like that he has hairy man legs like a man's supposed to have.  No, those socks are not sagging.  They just don't make socks big enough to go all the way up.  (I know someone who would make him a pair, for a price.)

I love that Loooca is the World's Leading Source of Dorkalicious.



He has no physical grace at all.  It's all just brute force.  nngghh  Even when the feed is bad, you can distinguish  his pixelated form from all the others by his arm-swinging lumbering walk.



When he was at Bayern in 2008-09, I frequently heard comments along the lines of "goes down pretty easily for a big guy."  heh heh  It's true.  He is incapable of shame.  It's not his fault.  It's not an affectation, like with Arjen Robben, who knows what he's doing and could stop if he weren't such a douche.  It's just a survival skill he picked up when he was living on his own in the woods, before Social Services found him and gave him to a human family.  He doesn't know any better.  He's like a human rescue dog.



Also from a guy calling a Bayern game:  "His protests are MAGNIFICENT!"  Look at that!  It's too ridiculous to be calculated.  &hearts  He's a silly silly boy.

Is Loooca the answer to Juve's horrendous striker issues?  mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm probably not.  Let's not kid ourselves.  And it's really weird to see him in bianconero.  But I'm glad he's here given the alternatives *coff coff Adebayor coff coff*  and I hope he finds his lost form.  And that he takes his shirt off when the weather gets warm.

His ability in the air is obvious.  Effing Morgan got in the way, but he got his headers reasonably on target, which no one else has been able to so lately.  Except Nick at Parma.



Morgan was full of it passion, as usual.  That's fine, except when he's playing Juve.



Against Juve, please shut up.

Looca beat Morgan once, and sent a powerful header into the net.  It was disallowed, apparently because Morgan punched him in the nose.  I know.  It doesn't make any sense.  I don't get it.



See?  Morgan punched Loooca.  And Maggio is practically ripping Gio's jersey off.  Poor sweet innocent Gio!



That was a perfectly good goal.



Oh.  Ooops.



Um, yeah.



Drat.  Maybe it was a good call after all.  Still sucks.

Morgan flung himself on the pitch like he'd been shot, and there was rolling around and complaining and protesting and so forth.

In my imagination at least, Morgan comes to his feet eventually and continues to complain that he was assaulted.



But Leo calls bullshit.  RAWR

Next match is a Coppa match at home against Catania on Thursday.  After that is another home match on Sunday against Bari.  Bari is dead last in the table, so Juve will certainly lose.