Blac and Nents silly match reports

[Nentsia]

Sicily - Italy

Its been six weeks now since I kissed Don Corleone's hand as he gave me his blessing to lead the biggest club of Sicilia, USC Palermo. The preparation for the season went much better than I had expected. Of course it began with that unexpected victory against Marseille, based on a gameplan of Giovanni Trapattoni, a specialist when it comes to functional and pragmatic football to help weaker teams. I stood for the daunting task to reverse the tactical brainwashing of the previous manager, some idiot who wanted Palermo to play Spanish Tiki-Taka and Juego de posicion and all that bullshit. So here I stand, in the Sicilian heat, yelling at the players to play the ball forward, and not sideways.

The second game of the pre-season was Novara, for some reason an affiliated club of mine in the lower league Serie B. Novara is a German, ahem... Northern Italian city close to Milan and Turin. I have no idea why they are affiliated with Palermo. But knowing Italians, it probably has to do with... Business. And Silvio Berlusconi.

Let me explain why it matters that Novara is from the North. The North, the Po Valley, occupied the South. The North destroyed the economy of the South and condemned it to lifelong slavery. The North produced Fascism and Mussolini. The South was the domain of rebels: Socialists, anarchists, the Church, and the Mafia. Rome was their common enemy. The Sicilians use olive oil, the Northerners butter - like Germans.

I won the game against Novara with 1-0. I wanted to see my alternative formation at work: 4-3-1-2. This formation is quite common in the Serie A because it serves two needs that have a high priority among Italian clubs: it employs a tridente up front that is a guarantee for goals, and it overloads the central areas of the pitch to ensure defensive security. I want to use this formation with Palermo against weaker teams against which I must win, while at the same time not exposing myself too much - for the Serie A is ruthless.

The system required some perfectioning though. Gradually, the team started to produce bigger and better results - with fat scorelines like 6-0. Also, the money started pouring in. I had asked Don Corleone for some... financial favors to help me with this job. I do not know where the money came from (millions) and I do not want to know. All I know is that the Corleone clan turned Palermo into Europe's Heroine capital in the 1970's, while prime minister Giulio Andreotti protected the Corleones as they arranged votes for him here in Sicily. The money was well-spent on an extra midfielder, Fernando Gago, and Alessandro Longhi - a full back. More importantly, the extra money enabled me to keep key players like Vazquez at the club.

Of course, Vazquez sent his agent to me to demand a much higher salary if I wanted to keep him at Palermo. So I went to see Don Corleone again, and asked him for advice. The Don assured me ''I'll make him an offer he can't refuse...''
Vazquez later showed up at the training as if he had seen a ghost. Apparently he had woken up with a horse's head in his bed, and his agent woke up at the bottom of the sea with a block of cement around his feet.


The Bus of Palermo

The pre-season ended, and I had to face Pescara, from the Serie B, in the Coppa Italia. I deployed the improved 4-3-1-2 with Palermo. The match was utterly boring, since Pescara parked the bus in front of its goal, and I instructed my players to play extra cautiously. The team struggled to create scoring chances, until a corner kick helped us out. Giancarlo Gonzalez headed the ball, but it hit the crossbar. The rebound was blocked. But then Hiljemark miraculously managed to get it into the net, despite everyone falling over eachother on top of the ball. With 1-0 in the lead, we gradually tightened up and slowed down the game, and suffocated it. With 1-0 the job was done.

Then the first Serie A game of the season came. I faced Sampdoria, a club from Genua. Sampdoria was once briefly succesful in Italy and Europe, in the early 1990's when players like Roberto Mancini and Gianluca Vialli played there. Now they have Antonio Cassano, Italy's enfant terrible. He could've been the best player in Europe. Instead he decided he wanted to have lots of sex while he was at Real Madrid.

Sampdoria was managed by Vincenzo Montella. This young Italian manager is known to deploy a very attacking 4-3-3, with many roaming players. Sampdoria was predicted to win. Time to put Trapattoni's system to the real test. I deployed my deep 4-4-2 block, instructed Giancarlo Gonzalez to man-mark the shit out of Cassano, and sit with 8 men in front of the goal. Basically, we played with 9 goalkeepers and 2 strikers: Gilardino and Vazquez.

After 10 minutes we surprisingly took the lead from a corner-kick. Andelkovic, a defender, headed the ball past Samp's goalkeeper. I specially chose for Andelkovic this game because of his strength in the air, something very useful when you intend to park the bus. Andelkovic repaid it with a goal. Around the 20th minute, Sampdoria equalized because nobody was paying attention to that midfielder who wandered into the penalty box and suddenly found the ball before his feet. But it was an away game, so I was willing to settle for a draw against Sampdoria.

Not much later however, we scored from another corner kick. This time it was the other central defender, Giancarlo Gonzalez. The second half then was mostly about Sampdoria trying all sorts of cool stuff like players swapping positions, and players overlapping, and very scary long shots (not..), while Palermo performed a shameless display of 'anti-football'. Palermo was dangerous on the counter attack occasionally, with Lazaar and Morganella on the flanks rushing up and down as Samp gave away lots of space. Gilardino was very close to a goal a couple of times. After 90 minutes, the game was over, we won as underdogs with 2-1, and Sicilian bus drove home again. Back to Palermo, where the Don congratulated me. But he also warned me. Next week you play against Inter Milan. ''Don't disappoint me.''