An opportunity wasted

By: salvatore | March 16th, 2008

Somehow, I’ve managed to come down with a pretty awful case of the flu in the last 12 hours, and I’m pretty sure I’m writing this with a fever. So keep that in mind if you spot any typos, grammatical errors or brain farts.

Brain Fart

In the grand scheme of things, getting a point at the Stadio Friuli isn’t such a bad thing. I mean, Udinese is a solid team, with one of the best attacking partnerships in Calcio. But goddamn it to hell, this was a winnable game, salvaged only by the fact that Simone Pepe did his best Perrotta impersonation, and missed possibly the biggest sitter of the year.

Delio didn’t go through with the idea of starting Vignaroli, and as if the team knew they’d dodged a bullet, they dominated the first 20 minutes of the game, took an early lead and looked comfortable up until halftime. Mourad Meghni, in particular, was lively and creative, a combination that has been sorely lacking in the engine room for most of this season.

Fittingly, Delio replaced him in the second half, and gave the aforementioned Serie B phenom, (heavy dose of Sudafed-influenced sarcasm here) Vignaroli, some playing time. Unsurprisingly, he was as underwhelming as you’d expect, and Udinese took control of the game from there, and kicked us in the balls twice on account of some sloppy defending.

On the positive side though, Cristian Ledesma actually put in a good performance, setting up Tommaso BaldBoa’s first half goal (albeit with a fortunate deflection), and scoring an absolute screamer in the second.

Considering he was a few games away from finding his face on a milk carton (below the word “Missing“), this comes as a surprise. For most of the last month he’s made my city’s snow removal crews look organized and hard working (no easy feat, those guys don’t give a fuck about anything), and it seemed like a matter of time before he would find himself next to Mauri, rotting on the bench.

Hopefully this “reawakening” is not a mirage then, and he can keep it up, at least for a few games.

Here are the highlights from SerieA.tv, complete with their typically annoying commentary (do they put these guys in some sort of testicle vice?):