Pre-Weekend News Roundup, Or: Games! Games! Games! (And a Touch of Fascism)

By: Martha | February 9th, 2007

Faster. FASTER! •Did you know all the games are being played on Sunday this weekend? What the hell am I supposed to do tomorrow? This is troubling indeed. I guess Juve is on. That, and Newcastle-Liverpool. I suppose I’ll survive, but just barely.

•Not surprisingly, the 17-year-old who has been arrested for the murder of Filippo Raciti is a member of Forza Nuova, the fascist group with suspected ties to Catania ultras. As you might expect, the boy’s father claims he’s being scapegoated, while the Forza Nuova website is sure it’s all part of a conspiracy against “a movement which has won the sympathy of many.” And by “many” they mean “mindless thugs.” (More on this over the weekend, probably.)

•Juventus (gasp!) are said to be eying up Arsenal midfielder Gilberto Silva, seeing him as a €7.5 million replacement for long lost generals like Patrick Vieira and Emerson. It must be true, because a Juve scout was at the Brazil-Portugal game midweek — obviously Silva is the only player he could have been watching.

•It’s all hands on deck at the San Siro, where 100-odd people are reportedly working frantically to install enough turnstiles to allow season ticket-holders to attend Sunday’s game against Livorno. Even if ~~all 160~~ the necessary 28 units are in place (and, you know, hooked up — just arranging them in patterns around the stadium won’t be enough), though, no single ticket-holders will be allowed in — it’s season ticket-holders or nothing. One wonders if they would be quite so frantic were Sunday not likely to be Ronaldo’s big debut, but there it is.

•The postponed games have been rescheduled: Week 22’s matches will now be played Wednesday, April 18, while the Coppa Italia Finals will take place on May 9 and 17.

•Despite what Javier Saviola’s “friend” Andres D’Alessandro told the press last month, there is apparently no agreement in place to bring him to Juve over the summer. Shocking, I know. Even though Didier Deschamps totally loves Saviola based on their shared history at Monaco, he seems to think Alessandro Del Piero and Saviola are too short to play together. Seriously, he said that. (Who knew picking a side had to do with size rather than skill or team shape? I could do that!) So any possibility of a deal is off, apparently. Oh well.