A group of fans surrounded Osvaldo cars as he was leaving Trigoria this afternoon and were insulting him. Osvaldo tried to drive through them, and an angry fan then hit his car before the police interviewed.
Carlo Zampa was again very hard on Osvaldo this afternoon. He said he's heard from a source that when Osvaldo didn't join the team in America it might not have been because he was sick, but because he was with his girlfriend.
Media reports of a summer sale of Osvaldo....they estimate 20m. I'm sure this is one of many reports of a transfer.... http://www.football-italia.net/30652/osvaldo-available-transfer
I would like the following to see the door this summer for various reasons: Stek, Osvaldo, Burdisso, Ballz, and possibly DDR. Have have lost alot of faith and respect for DDR this season. His maturity as our vice-captain has been appalling at the very least.
I think Burdisso is most certainly at the end of experience with us, he looks ready to do his retirement tour in South America. I would caution to keep Balzaretti. I think that these two years have shown money is tight. Roma do not own Piris, and will either need to sign him or hopefully sign and even better player. Moving Balzaretti, who has a low value would mean having to sign another player on that flank. While keeping him allows us to have to players on that flank and concentrate on replacing Burdisso and trying to fix the god forsaken midfield.
I agree with this. Specifically if moving forward the team plays with a less Zeman like approach and doesn't require so much attacking from the flanks by the outside backs.
If we get a coach that uses full backs for defense a bit more, Balza will be fine. The only thing he lacks is crossing, when it comes to defending he was more than satisfactory.
^ Balza is a keeper for me as well...I always hoped that Burdi would return to his form from years ago...guess he was just playing for a contract.
Considering what we've been seeing from this team the last 2 years, I'd say very few of these guys deserve to be here in that case. That entire "we are great because we represent the capital of Italy" mentality means very little to me. We sure as hell aren't playing much better than your average provincial side.
If Osvaldo is sold any money we get from his sale should immediately be focused on improving our dreadful backline, plain and simple.
The problem with the defense is just as much coming from the midfield. Our midfield doesn't recover balls. If we recover balls it's in the final third in front of our goal. A good strong defender to replace Burdisso, preferable a fast one. However the bulk of the work needs to be addressing the midfield, which hasn't worked since David Pizarro stopped playing.
He needs to be a bench player which I think he was brought into be but has been playing nostop because everyone has been just so bad all year. He's fine as a bench player not a starter.
On the way back from Genoa after the Sampdoria match. A fan complimented him in his amazing penalty, letting him know he paid a bunch of money for tickets and flight. Osvaldo threw his bag on the ground and got in his face.
I don't think anybody disagrees that he was an important player for us for a while. However, that's not mutually exclusive to the opinion that it was time for the club to get rid of him. We got some good years of play out of him, but it's better for us that he's not around at this point of time.
I think that Pizarro not being able to play with continuity even after leaving Roma says a lot about where he is in his career and with his health. The cycle of Pizarro ended, and I would not even say that it ended prematurely because of Roma. We came close to two titles with the best Pizarro and should be grateful for the wonderful memories. The biggest mistake was not selling him but not replacing him. Our love of De Rossi lead us to believe he could run the entire midfield and clearly we underestimated just how much David made things work. It should also not be undersold that he played against the coach and that is something which can not be tolerated or forgiven, at least in my opinion.