Inter Eye Zabaleta And Casilla

Inter are weighing up an approach to land Pablo Zabaleta from Espanyol at the end of the season and are also keeping an eye on young goalkeeper, Kiko Casilla.

The Italian giants have been linked with a move for the Argentinian full-back in the past, but are now preparing to make their interest more concrete.

A bid of around €6m will be Inter's starting gambit as Espanyol must brace themselves for a flock of their players being the subject of offers from other clubs.

Zabaleta is seen by Roberto Mancini's side as the player that could fill a missing place as Maicon likes to attack and Javier Zanetti can be empolyed more centrally.

The Espanyol defender would offer more stability as he is seen as a convnetional full-back that sits deep and does not power up field to help the forwards at every opportunity.
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Inter are also said to be keeping an eye on the Barcelona-based club's young keeper Casilla as he has impressed several of Europe's top clubs since his day with Real Madrid's youth teams.

Also linked with a move away from los Periquitos is defender Marc Torrejón, who is the subject of increasing interest from the English Premier League.

Calcio Debate: Del Piero – Trezeguet & Great Forward

On Sunday evening Alessandro Del Piero and David Trezeguet once again showed just how outstanding their forward partnership is by sharing another three goals between them. Carlo Garganese asks where the Juve-duo rank with some of the great Serie A partnerships of the past…

Anyone who saw David Trezeguet’s second goal against Livorno a couple of nights ago will surely have stood up and applauded the telepathic link-up play between the Frenchman and strike-partner Alessandro Del Piero.

Since the year 2000 when Trezeguet first joined Juve, the pair have been terrorising opposition defences, scoring goals galore virtually every season.

The level of consistency over a period of nearly eight years is something quite extraordinary. Below is the total of combined goals scored by Trez and Del every season from 2000.

2000/01: 24

2001/02: 53

2002/03: 36

2003/04: 36

2004/05: 31

2005/06: 49

2006/07: 38

2007/08 (so far): 23

In total, according to the figures above, Del Piero and Trezeguet have hit 290 goals between them.

When you consider that Filippo Inzaghi was first-choice for large portions of Trezeguet’s first season, while Del Piero was often substitute or substituted during Fabio Capello’s time in charge, then this accumulation is even more impressive.

Then of course there are injuries to consider, as well as the fact that Trezeguet doesn’t take penalties, although of course this is perhaps countered by the fact that Del Piero does.

Many have always doubted whether Del Piero and Trezeguet were really made to be a partnership. Neither is renowned for their physical strength, nor for their ability to hold up the ball, or most importantly for their pace.

Some top strikers have also joined Juventus over the past eight years, probably to give Juve an extra dimension in this sense.

The likes of Marco Di Vaio, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and most recently Vincenzo Iaquinta have all threatened to lead to the downfall of one of the pair.

Di Vaio had an excellent start to his career in Turin in 2002, but soon fell off the radar as it became obvious that he was no match for either of Trezeguet or Del Piero.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic joined in 2004 and soon became a favourite of Fabio Capello, who clearly preferred the Swede to Del Piero.

Although Ibra was outstanding in his first season, scoring 15 Serie A goals, everyone will remember that he couldn’t hit a barn door in his second campaign, netting just seven times.

Meanwhile Del Piero, who as mentioned above was often used as a substitute (or substituted early in the second half), still managed to score just one less than Ibrahimovic in the latter’s first season (in fact two more if you include Champions League goals), while in 2005/06 he hit the back of the net 20 times in total. Trezeguet meanwhile smashed in 45 during these two years.
This sequence has continued this current campaign. Vincenzo Iaquinta was brought in from Udinese and in truth has made an excellent start to his Juve career. The 28-year-old even dislodged Del Piero as a first-choice starter for a while.

However it soon became clear once again that Iaquinta could not match the [goalscoring] consistency of Del Piero and Trezeguet, and it was only a matter of time until the old partnership was resumed.

At the age of 33 and 30 respectively, the duo are still going very strong, and have already hit 23 goals between them this season, particularly impressive when you consider how weak and embarrassingly uncreative Juventus’ midfield currently is.

At times it is true that Del Piero and Trezeguet do not seem like they are well-suited to each other and a lack of pace can be a problem in some games.

However statistics do not lie and when the partnership is finally broken up for good, the pair will surely go down as one of Serie A’s great deadly duo’s.

Some Great Duo’s From The Past (note these are not necessarily both centre-forwards. They could be two players, like Michel Platini and Paolo Rossi, who just had an outstanding understanding together)

Andriy Shevchenko & Filippo Inzaghi (Milan)

Alessandro Del Piero & Filippo Inzaghi (Juventus)

Giuseppe Signori & Pierluigi Casiraghi (Lazio)

Fabrizio Ravanelli & Gianluca Vialli (Juventus)

Gabriel Batistuta & Francesco Baiano (Fiorentina)

Marco Van Basten & Daniele Massaro (Milan)

Roberto Mancini & Gianluca Vialli (Sampdoria)

Diego Maradona & Careca (Napoli)

Karl-Heinz Rummenigge & Alessandro Altobelli (Inter)

Michel Platini & Paolo Rossi (Juventus)

Francesco Graziani & Paolo Pulici (Torino)

Roberto Bettega & Roberto Boninsegna (Juventus)

Angelo Sormani & Pierino Prati (Milan)

Omar Sivori & John Charles (Juventus)

Are Milan And Inter Really Fighting Over Ronaldinho?

Are Milan And Inter Really Fighting Over Ronaldinho?

Just as Milan’s interest in signing Ronaldinho looked to have cooled, along came Inter with an announcement that they want to sign the player. Gil Gillespie peers through the smoke and mirrors and tries to discover the truth behind the Milanese clubs' intentions.

In the red corner we have Silvio Berlusconi and Adriano Galliani. In the blue corner are Massimo Moratti and Roberto Mancini. And in the middle is Ronaldinho, Brazilian footballing superstar, twice FIFA World Player of the Year and a fading idol currently sinking as fast as an unhappy, out-of-form fly in Frank Rijkaard's mid-morning cappuccino.

Welcome to the one-city, two-club battle for to sign Ronaldinho - an event where no-one should be taken at face value and no words should be treated as gospel.

Milan are known to be long-time admirers of Barcelona's unsettled 'fantasista', but the club's interest was generally thought to have dwindled in recent months, just like the form and commitment of the player himself.

But then Inter signed a mammoth 10-year sponsorship deal with Nike, and the mischievous Roberto Mancini made his "nobody believed me when I talked about Ronaldinho" speech. Suddenly Milan were forced to prick up their ears again. (Or so we are led to believe.)

Whether Inter are genuinely interested in Ronaldinho or not is beside the point. The Nerazzurri have left their neighbours in an extremely uncomfortable position by merely declaring their interest.

After tracking the player for the last two years, can the Rossoneri just allow him to be snapped up from under their noses by their neighbours and biggest rivals?

And, according to prominent Italian broadsheet the Corriere della Sera, it is Milan who are now favourites to sign the Barca star as they have allegedly agreed to allow him to have complete control over his image rights.

"Not true," says Silvio Berlusconi. As always, the signing of Ronaldinho is a subject he's never been consistent on. He has openly voiced his admiration for the Barca playmaker for the last two years. Yet only a week ago the Milan president issued a clear statement of denial about his club’s interest in the Gaucho.

"I don't think Ronaldinho represents a great objective for us," said the perma-tanned former PM. "We must keep an eye on the balance in the dressing room... his purchase is not a priority for Milan."

But that was before Mancini stirred up this particular hornet's nest with his well-chosen press conference soundbites.

So have Milan really taken Mancini's bait? It's difficult to say. But you have to ask yourself, why would the world and European champions want a player like Ronaldinho anyway?

First of all, they have Kaka, who plays, more or less, in the same position that Ronaldinho occupies. Would Ancelotti ask Kaka to play out wide or drop deeper into midfield? Not a chance. Would he play the two of them behind a lone striker, probably Pato? It's a bit late in the day for Ancelotti to suddenly throw out a tactical approach that he has developed over many years and had so much success with, just so he can accommodate a potentially disruptive player whose best days may well be behind him.

The mind wanders back to 2002 when the Rossoneri brought another former World Player of the Year to the San Siro from Barcelona. Rivaldo spent the majority of his one disastrous season at Milan keeping the bench warm. He didn't fit. He just wasn't a Milan kind of player.

Neither is Ronaldinho.

But it’s not Ancelotti who has the final say as to who is signed and who isn’t signed, as we discovered when it was revealed that Berlusconi vetoed the deals to bring Gianluigi Buffon and Luca Toni to the San Siro in the summer.

But now, surely, the club's transfer targets lie elsewhere - with Gianluca Zambrotta, for example - and finding a replacement for the hapless, hopeless Dida. Thus even with £100 million to spend in the summer, it would be a surprise if Milan signed Ronaldinho.

So what about Inter? Is the Nerazzuri's interest in getting Ronaldinho to sign on the dotted line genuine, or merely provocative? They certainly have more room to accommodate the player on the pitch, even with Luis Antonio Jiménez exceeding expectations playing in the hole behind Ibrahimovic and Cruz.

And Ibrahimovic himself has given his approval to the idea. "Ronaldinho at Inter? Everyone would like to play with him,” the goal-bothering Swede told the Corriere dello Sport.

But despite these comments and those of Mancini, Inter's president Massimo Moratti has attempted to pour cold water on the whole story.

He reacted to the accusations made by Milan's chief executive Adriano Galliani, who claimed that he had been told of Inter's interest in Ronaldinho by Barcelona president Joan Laporta himself.

"Galliani maybe knows more than I do, but it's not true," said the Inter president. "I don't know who has spoken to him, but at this time the information he has is not correct."

In truth, it's impossible to know what is really going on beneath this curtain of double-speak, half-truths and Machiavellian double-bluffing. Maybe Inter are serious about signing Ronaldinho. Maybe they are just pulling their old sparring partner's leg. Maybe Milan will respond to Inter's noises. Maybe Inter are simply showing their fans that they have the financial muscle to compete with their nearest neighbours if they choose to do so.

Whatever the reality of the situation, both clubs need to ask themselves just how effective the Brazilian shoe-shuffler is likely to be in Serie A in his current state of mind, anyway. If he's finding life tough in the defensively liberal world of the La Liga, how will he cope with the fierce shadowing of Italy's most uncompromising back lines? Has he even still got it in him to rise to such a daunting new challenge? Because, right now, Ronaldinho looks as if he'd like to spend more time on the bench - or the beach - and less on the training pitch.

But before he unpacks his Bermuda shorts and lies back on the sun lounger, there is one other factor in this very complicated equation that hasn't been dealt with yet.

Chelsea may yet have the final say in where Ronaldinho plays his football next season. According to the influential player's agent Enzo Bronzetti, Ronaldinho will definitely join up with his former Barca coach Henk ten Cate at Stamford Bridge in the summer. It is a rumour that Spanish sports daily Marca has been talking up for some time and it makes more sense than the ones that see him going to either of the Milan giants. Roman Abramovich is rich enough - and perhaps naive enough - to take a gamble on such a global superstar, regardless of whether his powers are on the wane.

So for all the noise currently emanating from the city of Milan, London could well be the place you are most likely to find Ronaldinho playing his football next season.

Then again, he could always stay with Barcelona.

What do you think? Are Milan and Inter serious about bringing the Brazilian superstar to Italy? Or are they both bluffing, waiting for each other to blink? Where do you think Ronaldinho will be playing in 2008/09?

Coppa Italia: Juventus earn draw with Inter

ROME, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Late goals from Alessandro Del Piero and Jean Alain Boumsong earned Juventus a 2-2 draw at 10-man Inter Milan on Wednesday in the first leg of their Italian Cup quarter-final.

Argentine striker Julio Cruz headed the Serie A leaders in front nine minutes after the break and turned in a cross from Brazilian winger Cesar in the 74th to double the lead.


Del Piero pulled one back for Juve in the 79th and French defender Boumsong, who is expected to leave Turin in the transfer window, levelled the score with a header five minutes from time.

Cruz almost snatched a win for Inter when he hit the post in the closing stages.

Inter played almost the whole match a man short after defender Nicolas Burdisso was given a straight red card in the eighth minute for cutting down Del Piero as he charged on to goal.

Earlier, holders AS Roma drew 1-1 at Sampdoria despite also having to play with 10 men after French defender Philippe Mexes was sent off for a second yellow card in the 18th.

Reto Ziegler gave Samp the lead in the 61st with a glorious left-footed strike from outside the box.

Montenegro striker Mirko Vucinic sprinted on to a long pass from Brazilian midfielder Mancini and coolly slipped the ball home to earn Roma a draw seven minutes later.

Udinese came from behind to win 3-2 at home to Catania, who had Ghanaian midfielder Mark Edusei sent off for two yellows in quick succession in the closing stages.

Lazio entertain Fiorentina on Thursday (2000 GMT) in the final quarter-final first leg.

The returns take place next week.