A News Roundup of a (No Longer) Reasonable Size

By: Martha | January 10th, 2008

Flavio Briatore •The rumor mill tells us that Milan are planning a meeting with Emre’s agent today. The Turk — an ex-Inter player, you may recall — is a reasonable man and therefore wants out of Newcastle, and Carlo Ancelotti is supposedly a big fan, Inter past notwithstanding. Milan also want Boca Juniors defender Jonathan Maidana to be the next Paolo Maldini, except younger and more Argentine.

•QPR owner and F1 kingpin Flavio Briatore ripped Italian football in a recent interview with GQ, saying he preferred to be involved in the English game because only there could he and his team be judged on “merit.” He also had some fairly hilarious things to say about Italian referees, describing them as “all handsome, athletic, telegenic,” and desperate for attention, whereas in England “they have tubby bellies and they blow up very little because they are not [crazy] about getting noticed.” (Really? You think?)

•Milan are preparing to unleash a vicious, Brazilian, attacking trident on Napoli on Sunday — bring on the avalanche of goals! (What’s that? The match is at the San Siro? Oh. Never mind about the goals, then.)

•Our friends at Tuttosport are claiming Inter will have scouts at the African Cup of Nations to watch Senegal midfielder Moustapha Sall, who plays his club football at Saint-Etienne, and his club teammate Pascal Feindouno, also a midfielder, who is captain of Guinea and is attracting interest from Liverpool.

•Sebastian Frey recofirmed his love for Fiorentina yet again today, but he did casually mention that it would really, really easier to stay if the club were willing to pay its best players a bit more than €1.5 million/season.

•Genoa are eager to come to the rescue of Arturo Lupoli and free him from his non-playing nightmare for the next few months. (And that was even before he scored a brace in Fiorentina’s friendly today!) They also want Anthony Vanden Borre. (He didn’t score.)

•Now that Sven Goran Eriksson has fled in horror from his own eagerness to use him as a tool to pry Mancini away from Roma and Christian Riganò is too expensive for everyone, Man City striker Rolando Bianchi is, suddenly, a Torino target. I can’t imagine they could afford to buy him, but maybe the loan price will be lower than Riganò’s.

•Middlesboro are supposedly close to a deal for 18-year-old Goran Slavkovski, he of Inter’s primavera team. Those bastards!

•In some sort of very confusing contest for World Team of the Year, Milan are being pitted against the Germany women’s nation team, as well as — among others — the Boston Red Sox, Ferrari, and Australia’s cricketers. Make of that what you will.

•If one can believe Rome-based Il Messagero when it comes to transfer targets, Rome have themselves a rather impressive shopping list for this coming summer, including but not exclusive to: Adrian Mutu, Jeremy Mathieu, ~~Daniele~~ Andrea Dessena, Dimitar Berbatov and Johan Elmander. Got all that?