“Let’s see if Ancelotti can finish his time at Chelsea with a record as good as mine.”
Just one of a number of comment’s by Mr.Mourinho in the build up to Inter Milan’s crunch Champions League game against Chelsea.
As if that wasn’t enough to set the tone, Mourinho was also quoted in The Daily Mail as saying
“Chelsea have suffered in the last two years, and it’s no coincidence that their decline happened …
Hernan Crespo has always been a very talented footballer but for one reason or another, his move to Chelsea did not work out. Crespo started out life in his native Argentina with River Plate. After excelling in his first season with the Bueno Aires club, scoring 13 goals mostly from substitute appearances, he became a regular in the side for the next two seasons helping the team to two Argentinean Apertura Championships and a Copa Libertadores, where he scored twice in the first leg at home in the final.
A move abroad was not long in coming and he arrived in Italian football with Parma in 1996. In 4 seasons at the club he scored 61 league goals and helped the side to runners up spot in his first season at the club, and helped the team to Italian Cup and a UEFA Cup success in 1999, where he scored a goal in the 3-0 victory over Marseille in the final. Such performances attracted interest from other Serie A clubs who saw the Argentinean striker as one of the top strikers in the league.
Big spending Lazio won Crespo’s signature in 2000 for a then world record of £35million. He rewarded the Rome club with 26 goals in his first season and was named top goalscorer in Serie A at the end of the 2000/2001 season. The club however began to have financial problems and Crespo was seen as a very saleable asset. He was sold to Inter Milan for €20million plus young striker Bernardo Corradi in 2002 but his time at Internazionale was short. Signed as a replacement for Ronaldo who had moved to Real Madrid, Crespo struggled to settle in at the San Siro. Despite scoring seven goals, he was limited to eighteen league appearances as he was injured for several months in early 2003.
Then came his move to Chelsea for £17million. With Roman Abramovich’s millions, Claudio Ranieri picked Crespo to lead his forward line but he only started 19 league games in his first season in England, scoring twelve goals in the process. The then 28 year old Argentinean striker found it hard to adjust to the English lifestyle and when new manager Jose Mourinho brought in Didier Drogba, the Portuguese coach loaned the player back to Italy with AC Milan.
He had a good spell in Milan scoring ten league goals and also contributed greatly to Carlo Ancelotti side’s run to the Champions League final, scoring two goals in the final as they lost to Liverpool on penalties in 2005. Crespo wished to stay in Milan but with Mourinho unable to find backup for Didier Drogba, Crespo spent the 2005/06 season with Chelsea. It was a rewarding season with the club as he won his first and only European league title, but he still wished to return to Italy. Inter Milan took him on a two year loan deal and he contributed a fair amount of goals during Roberto Mancini’s successful title defences in 2007 and 2008. He was released from Chelsea at the end of the 2007/2008 season for nothing and was signed up by Inter on a one year deal. Under Jose Mourinho once again though, he only started two Serie A games and was omitted from the Champions League squad. To have a chance of getting into the Argentina World Cup squad place this season, Crespo moved to Genoa after his contract expired with Inter to seek more first team football.
His relative failure at Chelsea was surprising considering his fantastic goalscoring record but it was clear, he was not happy during his time in England and his heart always lay playing in Serie A.
Susana Werner is a pro-WAG, once dated Ronaldo – not Cristiano, but the original Ronaldo, more commonly known as fat Ronaldo. She is now married to Inter Milan goalkeeper Julio Cesar.
An actress and model, you can see why the Brazilian boys like her so much.
According to Bob Cass in the Daily Mail, Steven Gerrard is ready to quit Anfield after Liverpool’s latest struggles this season. The midfielder looked a dejected figure against Stoke on Saturday and the 1-1 draw did little to help under fire manager Rafa Benitez as he seeks to rescue a disastrous season by achieving a fourth place finish.
Gerrard, it appears, will once again go another season without a major trophy and …
So Jose Mourinho has deemed the Inter Milan squad lacking in depth, but what does this mean for Davide Santon? The Inter Milan youngster is an accomplished left full-back and even made the position his own during the latter half of last season, prompting Mourinho to sell Maxwell to Barcelona during the summer. If another left sided defender is brought in then where does Santon’s future lie?
The 19 …
Christian Vieri was a bit of a nomad at the start of his career. A list of the number of clubs he was at demonstrates this quite clearly. From 1991 to 1999, in nine seasons he played for nine clubs including spells at Atletico Madrid, Lazio, Atalanta and various other small Italian clubs. It was not as though he was not good enough for most of these clubs but he was in great demand, especially after scoring 24 goals in 24 league games during his one year in Spain for Atletico Madrid in the 1997-1998 season. He then went on to play in the World Cup after that successful season in Madrid and formed a threatening partnership with Roberto Baggio.
His successful spell with Atletico inevitably led to more interest back in Italy, and he was purchased by Lazio after the World Cup in France. During his only season in Rome he scored twelve goals, helping the team to Cup Winners Cup success. His style was of a typical old English centre forward, strong and powerful in the air, and when Marcello Lippi came to manage Inter for the start of the 1999/2000 season, he wanted another striker to partner Ronaldo. Chairman Massimo Moratti went after the Italian striker and he paid Lazio a then world record of £32.5million for the player.
Internazionale would be the most settled time in the career of Vieri, as he successfully led the line for the Milan club. He never developed a partnership with Ronaldo due to injuries which affected both players but he started to score nonetheless during his six year stay at the club. Managerial changes at the start of his career at Inter did not help in his settling in period but he shone under the management of strict disciplinarian Hector Cuper. Inter narrowly missed out on the title on the last day of the 2001/2002 season but Vieri still hammered in the goals as he regularly scored 20 a season, including becoming Serie A’s top goalscorer in 2003 with 24 goals. At international level, he had a successful World Cup in 2002, playing as a lone striker and scoring four goals in four games, including a goal in the controversial last 16 defeat to South Korea.
The arrival of Alberto Zaacheroni as coach in 2004 however changed Vieri’s fortunes dramatically. An injury he had sustained against Valenica in the Champions League Quarter final second leg the previous season had affected his game, and despite partnering Adriano upfront, his performances became substandard. His loss of fitness became an issue with the club and his contract was terminated in July 2005. Vieri’s career began to go downhill rapidly and he once again became a nomad, switching from club to club at regular intervals. After a brief six month spell with Inter’s city rivals Milan, he moved to Monaco in France to get regular first team football in a bid to get into the 2006 World Cup squad. A serious knee injury put pay to those ambitions and he returned to Italy on a small wage with one of his previous clubs Atalanta. Vieri had signed a contract with Sampdoria but the Genoa club terminated it due to laziness and he was picked up by Atalanta on a minimal wage, earning bonuses for scoring goals.
After a brief successful spell with Fiorentina in 2007/07 where he scored 9 goals in all competitions, he returned to Atalanta before his contract was terminated in April last year. Now 36 years of age, after a failed trial with Blackburn in the summer, Vieri finds himself in Brazil looking for work. A contract was withdrawn by Brazilian first division side Botafogo and last month Vieri expressed his desire to join third division outfit Boavista. Vieri is certainly a long way from the heights of European football he was at ten years ago.
Although he may not be a name that has been pasted all over the back pages of the newspapers recently, don’t be fooled into thinking that the likes of Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson of Manchester United have conveniently forgotten about the mercurial talents of SC Lille’s exciting young Belgian born midfielder Eden Hazard.
The youngster has been on the radar of many of European soccer’s elite clubs since …
As most of the European Leagues reach the midway point it is time to reflect in this New Year about transfer bargains. One that springs to mind is Lucio’s transfer from Bayern Munich to Inter Milan in the summer. Coming somewhat out of the blue, the Captain of Brazil was snapped up by Jose Mourinho for an undisclosed fee, believed to be in the region of £4.5 million.
Given that the move …
Manchester City look set to complete a move for Patrick Vieira imminently, and Mancini has reportedly been given the go-ahead to spend in the region of £100million over the course of this transfer window. 20-year-old Danish centre-back Simon Kjaer is thought to be high on the City manager’s list of prospective targets according to The Sun.
Kjaer, who is currently at Palermo, was watched by Mancini’s scouts in a match …
The Times is reporting that Manchester City are close to securing a loan deal for former-Arsenal midfield powerhouse, Patrick Vieira. The 33-year-old Frenchman is looking for a move away from Inter Milan and is keen on a reunion with his former boss Roberto Mancini.
Mancini had suggested that no moves would be made before the game against Manchester United in Wednesday but talks with Vieira have been ongoing over the …
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