Fiorentina v Atalanta: BOBO!!!!!

By: Martha | September 16th, 2007

BOBO! (With his shirt on, thanksverymuch.) The first half of this match was pretty dismal — a stop-start, boring, sloppy waste of time. The only reason a goal was scored is because an Atalanta defender managed to take out everyone in goal mouth when the ball was coming, and it trickled it because there was no one to stop it — it wasn’t as if there was a convincing shot on a goal, or anything.

In the second half, though, after Atalanta’s Moris Carrozzieri was sent off for his second bookable in the 48th minute, the game suddenly woke up and turned awesome. As you might expect, Fiorentina decided to pay attention to the match, and suddenly were finding space all over the pitch, playing a lot of nice on-touch football through the midfield. Adrian Mutu was a non-factor, but Fabio ~~Simplicio~~ Liverani was everywhere, Franco Semioli was causing all sorts of problems down the right side, and Giampaolo Pazzini was always around the box and looking vague threatening (despite wearing a fishing net on his head). Atalanta keeper Ferdinando Coppola had a fantastic game, though, and the visitors didn’t exactly sit in and try to absorb the pressure. Really, it was hard to tell they were down a man — they stayed organized and countered regularly, finally tying the game on a free kick from Cristiano Doni, who has that Cafu-smiling thing going on, except in a completely insincere way.

Wor Bobo came on for the ineffective Mutu with 30 minutes left and looked utterly exhausted about 10 minutes later. He held the ball up in the box well but always looked about half-a-step slow when it came to getting it out of his feet and off to someone else. Slow, that is, until he beat everyone to a Simplicio free kick and put the Viola into the lead in the 75th minute. Woo hoo! It was a glorious moment, featuring “LOOK AT ME, BITCHES, I’M FIT!” shirt-removal by Bobo (though not his girlfriend, to the disappointment of everyone in the ground) and utter madness among the supporters.

It would have been even better, though, had Bobo or Zdravko Kuzmanović put away their subsequent chances, because 10 minutes later Vieri’s fellow awesome old man Riccardo Zampagna tied the game on a ridiculous chip over his own shoulder to grab a point for Atalanta. Doh! Atlanta have started remarkably well for a team expected to be battling against relegation — we’ll see how long they can stay in the top half.