Inter Targeting More Goals in 2007-08 Serie A Season
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by Ea34
With all the talk focused on the opening days of the English Premier League season, it would be easy to miss the beginning of the season in the Italian Serie A, which kicks off with two games on August 25 and eight more on August 26. After being rocked by match-fixing scandal that saw one of the country’s most storied clubs (Juventus) relegated to Serie B and another (AC Milan) penalized 8 points, not to mention an alarming amount of fan violence and hooliganism, the 2007-08 Serie A season failed to capture the imagination of many fans, as Inter Milan ran away with the league title. Looking ahead to the upcoming season, it’s likely to be more competitive, with San Siro co-inhabitants Inter and AC Milan in a two-horse race for the Serie A crown. Juventus, one of Italy’s wealthiest and most powerful clubs, after being forced to sell a number of its prized players after being demoted to the second division, is likely another year away from being a serious championship contender. So we have the two Milan clubs battling for league supremacy- AC Milan, fresh off its Champions League win, led by Kaka, one of the top players in the world, and defending champions Inter Milan, without one single transcendent star but a collection of very gifted footballers. Despite meeting more resistance from AC Milan that it did form anyone else in the league last season, Inter Milan shouldn’t encounter too much difficulty repeating as champions of Serie A.
Entering the 2007-08 season in Italy, fresh off a season in which it absolutely dominated Italy’s Serie A, winning the league title by an astounding 22 points, Inter Milan is showing no signs of allowing the competition to close the gap. Spearheaded by 15 goals from Swedish international Zlatan Ibrahimovic, 14 from Argentine striker Hernan Crespo, and 10 from everyone’s favorite Zidane antagonist, defender Marco Materazzi, Inter scored a league-leading 80 goals (6 more than #2 AS Roma, 18 more than #3 Fiorentina), but the club is not relying on past successes, aggressively bolstering its frontline in the summer transfer window.
On June, Inter completed its signing of Cagliari striker David Suazo to a four-year contract for an undisclosed amount. After breaking Gigi Riva’s club record with 22 goals in 2005-06, the 27 year-old Honduran international led Cagliari with 14 goals this past season and shared the honor of best foreign player in Serie A with AC Milan’s Kaka, arguably the top footballer on the planet today.
The signing of Suazo was the culmination of a truly bizarre two-week transfer battle between city rivals Inter and AC Milan. Two weeks earlier, Inter announced the signing of Suazo but, after failing to finalize the deal, Suazo was offered to AC Milan, who would have signed him had he not already signed a contract with Inter.
By adding Suazo to its attack, Inter may be may signaling the end of the road at the San Siro for another of the club’s talented strikers, Brazilian international Adriano. Following another disappointing season for the Nerazzurri (5 goals in 14 games), Adriano will likely be made expendable by the arrival of another world-class striker.
This would open the door for not only his return to Fiorentina, where he played 15 games in 2002 on a loan deal, scoring 6 goals, but a reunion with Adrian Mutu, the Romanian international with whom Adriano formed a potent scoring combination at Parma in 2002-03. Fiorentina recently lost more than a quarter of its goal production (16 of 62) following the £7.5 million ($15 million) sale of striker Luca Toni to Germany’s Bayern Munich. Just a thought.
