Big Boy Call-Ups
(New guy is quite please with himself.)
Cesare's squad for the upcoming matches was a poorly kept secret at best, but it's now been officially released (link goes to PDF). As expected, DDR and Mario have both been left out, while Santon's made his return and his Cesena teammate Marco Parolo has earned his first senior call. Also: Noce is back, for the first time in four years. \o/ The full squad is as follows:PORTIERI: Gianluigi Buffon(Juventus), Salvatore Sirigu (Palermo), Emiliano Viviano (Bologna).
DIFENSORI: Davide Astori (Cagliari), Federico Balzaretti (Palermo), Leonardo Bonucci (Juventus), Giorgio Chiellini (Juventus), Domenico Criscito (Genoa), Daniele Gastaldello (Sampdoria), Christian Maggio (Napoli), Andrea Ranocchia (Inter), Davide Santon (Cesena).
CENTROCAMPISTI: Alberto Aquilani (Juventus), Claudio Marchisio (Juventus), Stefano Mauri (Lazio), Riccardo Montolivo (Fiorentina), Thiago Motta (Inter), Antonio Nocerino (Palermo), Marco Parolo (Cesena).
ATTACCANTI: Antonio Cassano (Milan), Alberto Gilardino (Fiorentina), Sebastian Giovinco (Parma), Alessandro Matri (Juventus), Giampaolo Pazzini (Inter), Giuseppe Rossi (Villarreal).
The team convene at Coverciano tomorrow for training and the first of many press conferences and will fly out to Slovenia on Thursday ahead of Friday's qualifier. They return to Italy Friday night for more hanging out and training, then head to Kiev on Monday for a friendly against Sheva and his crew on Tuesday. Hopefully when everyone goes back to their parent clubs for Wednesday's training session, none of them will be broken.