Ah, Finally: A Big, Foreign Quagliarella Bid! (Also: Corini to Roma?)

By: Martha | June 14th, 2007

Big Quags The same day we’re told Fabio Quagliarella would rather “prove himself” at Sampdoria than flee for greener pastures the moment he and scores a brace for the Azzurri, the British press revealed that a £10 million bid for the striker is in the works at Manchester United. Man alive. Well, whether there’s any truth to this rumor or not, it’s given at the very least a ring of plausibility by the recent loss of Louis Saha to surgery and United’s resulting fears they’ll be thin in attack when the new season kicks off in August. Also, the reported amount is at the lower edge of the price range Sampdoria set in the minutes after Quagliarella’s goals for Italy, so it’s not an offer they’d reject out of hand.

That said, the striker is co-owned by Udinese, a status which would complicate any foreign transfer and therefore makes the talk of a move to Roma perhaps more likely (if he’s going anywhere). As you can read in Chris’ regular updates, word on the street is that Roma would buy only Samp’s half of Quagliarella, offering Mirko Vucinic, U21 Azzurrini goalkeeper Gianluca Curci and an undermined amount of cash in exchange.

Or, alternately, instead of bringing in a young scorer, Roma could stick an aging stud in their midfield, in the form of Eugenio Corini. Yes, that rumor is back again, this time from the mouth of the man himself, who told an Italian radio station today that he’s received “one proposal that fills up to me of pride” from the capital club.* He doesn’t provide any specifics of the offer, though, and isn’t leaping into Giallorossi arms just yet — he’ll spend the next little while sorting though the massive pile of offers on his table and work out which one is best; at that point we’ll see what actually happens. (I still love Corini, but I still don’t get how he’d fit in at Roma. I would love nthing more than to be wrong, though, and to spend next season watching him kick ass and take names in one of those weird, skin-tight jerseys from the future.)

*Link again from Lisa the Palermo goddess.