A day of coaching changes in Serie A. At his first press conference as Palermo boss back in the summer, Walter Zenga famously said his objective for the season was to win the Scudetto. Well 13 games into the season, and Palermo was 15 points behind leaders Inter and didn’t look like Scudetto contenders at all. Maurizio Zamparini grew impatient and sacked him today (I knew the Zenga-Zamparini relationship wouldn’t last a complete season), replacing him with former Lazio boss Delio Rossi, who had always been linked to the Palermo job. Another team has brought in a new manager and that is Siena, who are currently last in the table. Primavera coach Marco Baroni had been the interim manager the last two games while the club searched for a new manager, and had almost brought back Mario Beretta but that fell through. Instead, they have brought in Alberto Malesani, known for his past glory at Parma in the 90’s and for yelling Italian curse words at the Greek media. Personally I think Malesani has had his success as a manager and doesn’t have the magic touch anymore, I don’t know if Siena made the right move. Round-up after the jump.

SERIE A RESULTS, STANDINGS, AND HIGHLIGHTS

SERIE B RESULTS AND STANDINGS

Milan has really jumped up the table these past few weeks. After the horrible start where everyone condemned the Rossoneri to a season of misery, Leonardo’s squad has made a complete turnaround, finally playing well and becoming contenders once again. They now find themselves 5 points behind leaders Inter and only 2 behind Juventus and saying the word Scudetto shouldn’t be met with laughter. Ronaldinho looks to have found motivation to play again and has been excellent, Pato is scoring crucial goals, and even Massimo Oddo has been placing his crosses into the box instead of row Z of the stadium. If Milan can keep it up, they can make this season a lot more interesting. Serie A round-up after the jump.

SERIE A RESULTS, STANDINGS, AND HIGHLIGHTS

SERIE B RESULTS AND STANDINGS

The picture on the left is the photo sequence of Dejan Stankovic’s 54 meter long strike vs Genoa on Saturday. Marco Amelia messed up his clearance, and Stankovic coordinated a beautiful volley that sailed over Amelia and bounced into the net. Goals from midfield are always nice to look at. We’ll definitely see it in tomorrow’s Goals of the Week post. Weekend Round-up after the jump.

SERIE A RESULTS, STANDINGS AND HIGHLIGHTS

SERIE B RESULTS AND STANDINGS

Sorry I didn’t get up a weekend round-up yesterday, it was a really busy day. However I don’t want to disrupt the weekly order so I’ll go straight to Goals of the Week. Last week was probably the worst goals of the week post of all time. I think this week made up for it with some quality strikes. Goals of the week after the jump.

Ronaldinho vs. Atalanta – Alessandro Nesta plays a great ball in to Ronaldinho, who with a excellent trap and finish scores his first goal of the season and saves Milan from another loss.

Michele Marcolini – Marcolini always scores a couple of these screamers every season. Awesome left foot volley that is too powerful for Marchetti to block.

Dejan Stankovic vs. Udinese – Stankovic puts the Nerazzurri ahead with this pinpoint strike that sails past Handanovic into the far upper corner.

Edinson Cavani vs. Juventus – Javier Pastore robs the ball from Felipe Melo and slides a pass through for Cavani who powers one past Buffon.

Francesco Totti vs. Napoli – Totti reaches Batistuta’s goalscoring record of 184 goals in Serie A with this perfect strike.

Daniele Galloppa vs. Sampdoria – The Parma winger caps a great team move by Parma. Three touches and then the finish from Galloppa.

Giampaolo Pazzini vs. Parma – Perfect header from Pazzini. Very difficult to do.

But I think the goal of the week in Italy goes to Pasquale Schiattarella of Ancona in Serie B vs Torino:

This was an interesting story I came across today. Apparently there is a “Little Italy” of sorts in the Bulgarian First Division (official named the Bulgarian TBI A Professional Football Group, which is ridiculous), as Bulgarian club PFC Botev Plovdiv is owned by an Italian owner, has an Italian chairman, an Italian-Congolese sporting director, an Italian manager, and a roster that contains 10 Italian players (soon to be 11). More on this curious story after the jump.

It was hard to find information besides using Wikipedia since I discovered that navigating Bulgarian websites is rather difficult and that my knowledge of the Bulgarian language is limited to footballer’s names, like Hristo Stoichkov, Dimitar Berbatov, Martin Petrov, etc. However I found this article on the story that had some pictures. I’m assuming the overweight guy with the scarf and angry looking guy on the couch are the owner Francesco Salerno and chairman Marco Ornela, and the other man sitting alone on the couch is the Italo-Congolese sporting director Malu Mpasinkatu.

The club aren’t the most storied club in Bulgaria, as they last won the championship in 1967 and haven’t won anything since 1989. They made a couple of UEFA Cup appearances in the mid-90’s. They finished in 13th place last season. I can’t seem to find when this Italian guy Francesco Salerno bought the club, but it looked like he wanted to create an Italian colony in the Bulgarian first division.

If you take a glance at the current squad, as I mentioned before there are 10 Italian players. All of these players are basically Serie C players (with some making an appearance in Serie B) that decided to try this new adventure and make it big in Bulgaria. I actually recognize a few names from playing Football Manager on my PC and taking charge of squads in the lower Italian divisions. They are also in talks with players Davide Morello (who last played goalkeeper for Pisa) and defender Natale Gonnella (played with Hellas Verona in Serie A back in the day) to come and join the Italian colony. So basically, they can field an all-Italian starting XI.

However, it doesn’t seem to be working out so far, as Botev Plovdiv have lost their first 7 games of the season. Maybe the Italians are getting homesick?

Sampdoria are top of the table alone for the first time in 18 years. A week ago I wrote an article saying that Sampdoria could be the surprise of the season, and right now that hypothesis is still holding up. While it’s almost impossible for them to win the scudetto and considering the fact that Gigi Del Neri’s teams usually suffer a drop in form after the winter break, they should be challenging for a spot in Europe next season, whether that be Europa League or Champions League that remains to be seen. Certainly if they perform in every game like they did against Inter they should have no trouble reaching that objective. Serie A and B results and highlights after the jump.

SERIE A RESULTS, STANDINGS, AND HIGHLIGHTS

SERIE B RESULTS AND STANDINGS

After 3 giornate, only 3 clubs are still at full points: Sampdoria, who defeated Atalanta 1-0 in Bergamo with a goal from Daniele Mannini; Juventus, who saw Lazio off with a 2-0 win thanks to Martin Caceres and David Trezeguet; and Genoa, who thumped Napoli 4-1 with Sergio Floccari, Giandomenico Mesto, Hernan Crespo, and Houssine Kharja all scoring their first goals of the season. Full results after the jump.

REPORTS

All reports can be found here.

RESULTS, STANDINGS, AND HIGHLIGHTS

(Remember to click the number 03 to watch all the highlights)

SERIE B RESULTS AND STANDINGS

In July I had already posted a video of the week with some Italian amateur calcio bloopers from the mid-90’s. Well, I found even more Italian amateur calcio bloopers from the mid-90’s for our viewing pleasure. Video after the jump.

The Weekend Round-up will be up tomorrow since today was the last day of the summer transfer market and teams made last minute deals. Many clubs were scrambling until the very last minute to get contracts deposited into the league offices and some transfers had to be canceled because they weren’t completed in time. So I’ll try to highlight the more important transfers of the day after the jump.

-Juventus have brought Fabio Grosso back to Italy. After 2 seasons at Lyon, the World Cup winning left-back returns to the peninsula. Juventus now have Buffon plus 3 out of the 4 (Grosso, Cannavaro, Chiellini) Italian national team defenders. Maybe they should’ve brought back Zambrotta too?

-Chievo, who have probably one of if not the weakest attack in all of Serie A, brought in Torino striker Elvis Abbruscato on loan for the season.

-Napoli have parted ways with Francesco Montervino, who was one of their symbol players after going bankrupt. Montervino joined the club in Serie C in 2003 and was captain during the promotions to Serie B and then Serie A. Montervino has joined local rivals Salernitana.

-Manuele Blasi has been signed on loan from Napoli with the option to buy by Palermo to add some muscle to their midfield.

-Roma have tried to settle their goalkeeping troubles by signing Romanian Bogdan Lobont on loan from Dinamo Bucharest with the option to buy. Lobont played for Fiorentina in the 2005-2006 season. The capital club have also brought in 19 year old striker Fabio Zamblera on loan from Newcastle. Zamblera, a big target man type player, was on loan with Sampdoria last season and played for their Primavera side.

-Fiorentina underwent a swap with West Ham. The Viola sent defender Manuel Da Costa to England and in return got 20 year old winger Savio Nsereko, who impressed at Brescia before making the move to the EPL last January.

-Parma and Torino made a loan swap. Torino got striker Daniele Vantaggiato on loan, while Parma got Swiss midfielder Blerim Dzemaili.

-Sampdoria found a good back-up for Pazzini in Empoli’s former U-21 striker Nicola Pozzi. Pozzi arrives on loan for the season.

-Cagliari strengthened their midfield with the arrival of former U-21 midfielder Daniele Dessena from Sampdoria. The details of the transfer weren’t unveiled.

-Bari got the central defender they wanted (not Andreolli though) in Malian defender Souleymane Diamoutene, who was on loan at Roma last season. Diamoutene arrives from rivals Lecce on loan.

-Kaka may have left Italy, but his brother didn’t. Milan have sent his brother Digao on loan to Lecce for the season.

THE TRANSFERS THAT WEREN’T

-Genoa wanted to sign Atletico Madrid and Greece fullback Georgios Seitaridis, but apparently didn’t have enough time to close the deal.

-Bologna wanted to strengthen their attack with former Lecce striker and current Sevilla striker Javier Chevanton, but after agreeing to terms with the player they couldn’t agree with Sevilla in time.

-According to various sources, Roma were very close to signing Real Madrid striker Ruud Van Nistelrooy but they ran out of time to close the deal.

-Juventus defender Lorenzo Ariaudo had agreed to terms with Cagliari, but the Sardinian club didn’t deposit the contract in time and therefore the young defender didn’t make the move.

-Lazio were apparently all set to sign Cagliari and former U21 defender Michele Canini, but because they could not work out a deal with Reggina to buy their defender Carlos Valdez and send him to Cagliari in exchange for Canini the deal didn’t work out.

-Amantino Mancini looked to be on his way to either Genoa or Roma, but Jose Mourinho blocked the transfer, stating that Mancini was in his plans for this season.

-Goran Pandev and Cristian Ledesma wound up staying at Lazio despite wanting out. Ledesma looks as if he is ready to reconcile his differences with the club, but Pandev looks to be still in disagreement with Claudio Lotito. He now risks sitting on the bench until January.

The new Italy U-21 side (who lost their first friendly August 12 vs. Russia 3-2) will now start qualifying for the 2011 UEFA U-21 European Championship to be held in Denmark. The Azzurrini will play two games, one on September 4th away to Wales in Swansea, and the other on September 8th at home vs. Luxembourg in Novara. It is vitally important that the Azzurrini get off to a good start in qualifying so they can have an easy time in the group. Casiraghi has called up 23 players, 6 of which are receiving maiden call-ups. They are: Sampdoria striker (now on loan at Lecce) Guido Marilungo and 18 year old Sampdoria midfielder Roberto Soriano; Monza’s (on loan from Lazio) central defender Alessandro Tuia (considered the heir to Alessandro Nesta); Empoli defender Gabriele Angella; 17 year old Genoa goalkeeper Mattia Perin; and Inter midfielder Lorenzo Crisetig, who made his first team debut with the Nerazzurri in this summer’s friendly with Bahrain and is only 16 years of age! Traditionally, only those Italian players that are super-talented and possess potential world class ability make the jump from the other national youth teams straight to the U-21 squad, so maybe Crisetig is Italy’s new wonderkid? I guess we’ll find out. Full call-ups after the jump.

Goalkeepers: Fiorillo (Sampdoria), Perin (Genoa), Seculin (Fiorentina);

Defenders: Angella (Empoli), Ariaudo (Juventus), Bellusci (Catania), Brivio (Vicenza), Gentili (Varese), Ranocchia (Bari), Rispoli (Brescia), Tuia (Monza);

Midfielders: Barillà (Reggina), Bolzoni (Frosinone), Castiglia (Cittadella), Crisetig (Inter), Mustacchio (Ancona), Poli (Sampdoria), Soriano (Sampdoria);

Strikers: Balotelli (Inter), Macheda (Manchester United), Marilungo (Lecce), Paloschi (Parma), Pasquato (Empoli).