Delicious Suazo Fallout Begins

By: Martha | June 19th, 2007

What? i didn't do nothing! See? It’s only taken a matter of hours for the Milan clubs to start going at it — imagine where we’ll be a week from now, when they’re wrestling over Eto’o, or Ronaldinho or, God forbid, The Great Sheva!

According to Cagliari president Massimo Cellino, Inter chief Massimo Moratti failed to answer his phone for several days. So, he did what anyone else would do in that situation: Rang up Andriano Galliani, just to see what was up. Oh, and to ask if he, perchance, might need a striker. One thing led to another and, yadda yadda, Suazo signed with Milan.

Moratti, however, strenuously denies that Cellino ever tried to contact him, and furthermore claims the striker had already signed with Inter and was no longer Cagliari property. As a result, he really should have been sold to another club in the wee hours of this morning. Not that there was anything remotely shady about the deal — I know I conduct all the business I feel is most legit at about 1am. What? Don’t you?

For their part, Milan are not-so-subtley laying everything at Cellino’s feet. Said Galliani, “Cellino said that the negotiations with Inter were over and so we started and concluded a new negotiation.” This way, if it turns out the deal with Inter had, in fact, been signed, Milan’s only failing is being gullible; their worst offense will have been taking Cellino at his word, certainly not sneaking around trying to disrupt a deal between Cagliari and Inter. Smooth, Adriano. Very smooth.

Meanwhile, despite saying just yesterday that Samuel Eto’o was Milan’s primary summer target, Galliani is now admitting the Suazo signing makes the addition of the Cameroonian unlikely. While no Eto’o, Suazo is pretty fantastic in his own right, not to mention a whole lot cheaper than the Barca player — this sounds like a pretty good deal for Milan, though we’ll have to wait to see how they react if Eto’o ends up in an Inter shirt come August.

[And, just so we all have the proper historical context, La Gazzetta dello Sport have provided a handy roundup of all the occasions over the past few years on which one of the Milan teams signed a player who was assumed to have already signed elsewhere, among them: Dejan Stankovic, Marco Materazzi, and Manuel Rui Costa. Point being, this ain't nothing new.]