Right, So Who Wants a Cassano?

By: Martha | July 23rd, 2007

In better days. As you may have heard, Real Madrid are back in training. As you may also have heard, Antonio Cassano is sitting on his couch, sucking his thumb and raging against the injustice of life, because he wasn’t invited to camp. Wow, has that got to suck. It’s one thing to make whining noises, pound your fist and demand a transfer, but it’s quite another to have your team respond to those demands with glee, and then leave you sitting at on your butt while they train, even though you’ve not been sold. (And, you may recall, Cassano himself rejected the one good offer Real got for him.)

So, if there was any doubt before, it’s now officially gone: Cassano is on the move, and today the fun of guessing his most likely destination begins. Me, I would assume Italy is his first choice (having already rejected a move to Turkey, it’s clear he’s not interest in the Lucarelli-style exotic-ish route), despite the fact that his dream of joining Inter is never, ever going to happen, if only for striker volume reasons. He’s ludicrously young, and surely still holds a thought that he’ll be a regular in the Italy side; any idiot knows it’s awfully hard to re-establish yourself when you’re playing abroad. Additionally, despite his troubles at Roma, Italy is the place where Cassano became a star and, at this point, familiarity would probably be welcome.

There’s always going to be a market for a player of Cassano’s obviously ability, it’s just too bad he’s become so difficult to deal with that few teams are willing to take a chance on him. Whoever does so this time is either going to get really, really lucky and have a brilliant striker on their hands, or end up in such a horrible position that Cassano won’t be able to find work in Europe ever again. (Hello, MLS!) So far the summer, the most interest team has been Napoli, but that talk has cooled off to the point of silence in recent weeks. Genoa, too, were once involved in the rumors, and Milan were interested last winter, but it would take a change in their dressing room to allow a move for the genius pain in the ass.