Minispam: Meet & Greet + Pretteh + A Few Match Pix
("Screw football, people -- check me out!")
Even though no photographers seem to have bothered to attend, Fiorentina played in The Dahila Cup yesterday, a triangular tournament against Catania, who hosted, and Cagliari. Each team played the other two in 45-minute matches that went straight to PKs if they ended in ties, and La Viola came in second, beating Cagliari 1-0 but losing to Catania 0-2 and looking awful in the process.
The good news is that Vargas, who scored the only goal, is playing great, Seb is awesome as usual, and Gila and Marchionni are playing together incredibly well, despite only having known one another about two weeks. Plus, both flanks -- Vargas/Pasqual and Marchionni/Comotto -- look very comfortable together, which is reassuring. The problems, though, are that Mutu (whose life admittedly sucks a lot right now) is doing nothing, and the middle of the park in general is really, really uninspiring. Cesare was slightly annoyed about getting crushed by Catania, but didn't seem overly bothered in general, so I guess we should just try to adopt his serenity, huh?
Oh, and a few days before going to Sicily for the tournament, the boya had a little meet and greet in San Pietro a Sieve, their current training base. Mostly, they posed for pictures while Monty ate.
Rolling up in to town behind their fearless leaders, Avramov and Jefferson.
Well, alright. Whatever works, fellas.
Notice, please, that Comotto has transformed himself into a random man wearing Carhart pants. That is a skill right there.
Babies, wondering why the hell they had to come, since no one knows who they are and they'd much rather be playing video games.
Da Costa, taking a picture of himself in order to feel involved.
Gambit, humoring his public.
Monty, doing NO SUCH THING. And don't even think about touching his cake -- he will cut you, you know he will.
Dainelli: *notices that Monty is looking like a freak and grabs something to eat in order to help him out*
Pubes, meanwhile, takes the opportunity to ask for that Gambit autograph he's wanted for so long.
... And then pound his chest in celebration?
Poor Santana. In every picture he looks more miserable than he did in the last.
That is not, however, a problem for Seb.
(These pregame pictures are actually from before the PSG match, but they went up late and needed to be seen, so I'm putting them here.)
(SO Andrew McCarthy in the last one, y/y?)
I'd say he's been learning to pose from the Playmate but, really, he's way better than she is. Plus, no props!
Inspired by Monty, Pubes got his soulful face on, too.
Then Adi came by, strictly for the purposes of comparing the team's most ill-advised facial hair situations.
Erm, sorry. Two of the three most ill-advised facial hair situations.
Dude, don't even try to act innocent, we see that you're shaving that weird, fatguy line into your beard again.
Pout all you want, that's only going to work on AJ and Conny.
Gobbi: *wanders by to show that Monty's not the only one without facial hair issues*
Ok, so the actual matches. Most of the first team started the Cagaliari match, while the Catania one featured a lot of reserves, including Babacar who won everything in the air and had one good chance at goal.
You can tell this is from the Catania match, since Da Costa is in the picture. (He actually had some good blocks in the middle of the back, believe it or not.)
Gila started up top in the first match and looked good -- he's sharp, and he and Marchionni are basically reading one another's minds already, which is hella creepy.
Little Marchionni was doing his mad running around the midfield thing again, but since it's working, I don't think anyone will complain.
He set Gila up for several chances and is really starting to look good.
Mutu, who has gone from tape all over his body to no tape anywhere, did very little.
He's not on the same page as anyone else yet, and is doing very little running -- do you think Gila and Marchionni get annoyed as they run past him to pressure the ball?
Pasqual doesn't look real sharp yet, but he and Vargas look good together, which is encouraging.
Vargas, meanwhile, was described by a fan site as "the most in-form Viola," and scored a great goal (created by Gila's vision), giving Dainelli an almost obscene amount of pleasure.
Gobbi played both left back and left mid in the second match and (like the rest of the team) wasn't real impressive at either spot.
In the sea of suck that was the second match, Jojo was a faint ray of light.
Fiorentina didn't really manage to attack often enough to give him many chances, but he was dangerous when he got the ball.
Donadel was also dangerous but, as Gobbi could tell, in a totally different way.
One of the fans sites described him as "nervous."
Which makes sense, if by nervous they mean "gone round the bend entirely and not even trying to play football anymore." It was not pretty.
The team have the day off today, and will train tomorrow and Wednesday morning ahead of a friendly against the babies Wednesday evening.