For him to start this game with players like Michael Silverstre, who had not played for over 6 months, Rio Ferdinand, who got injured against Middlesboro on Sunday, leave out Paul Scholes, Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo showed the contempt he had for Roma’s chances and they did not let him down.
Frankly Italian football has been an embarrassment for 2 seasons now and it is time they take stock of how far they have fallen from grace. All they do is bicker about refereeing decisions and constantly gripe about the success of Inter Milan saying they are being favoured by referees, that they have stopped getting world class talent into their league.
AC Milan are actually thinking of bringing back Andriy Shevchenko back to their team. It is bad enough that they have the oldest squad in the world but instead of trying to reduce the average age, they keep buying players that are past it.
Managers are sacked and rehired on a constant basis showing that the people that are running the clubs do not have a clue. What is the point in sacking a manager if you are going to bring in someone worse, only to sack him and then rehire the previous manager?
This is not something that happens once in a long while, it happens very often with different clubs.
It says a lot that Juventus that was relegated last season are 3rd in the league with what is at best an average manager and average bunch of players but unlike Roma they have the will to win. They might not have the quality that Roma possesses but in players like Gigi Buffon, Alessandro Del Piero, Pavel Nedved, Mauro Camonaresi and David Trezeguet they have players that would always make a difference to any team in the world.
There is not a chance that with the team Ferguson put out that Juventus would not have scored against United because Fergie took a huge chance and he possibly thought and quite rightly that Luciano Spaletti is nowhere near the level required to win the champions league.
How else would you explain his putting out 1 striker against an injured Ferdinand and Gerard Pique or his playing Cassetti instead of Max Tonnetto? To be fair he did not anything that would have changed my beliefs that his relative success in seriea is due to the lack of good football teams and managers currently as 5-10 years ago he would not have been in charge of a team in mid-table never mind a team challenging for the championship.
AC Milan could quite conceivably come 4th with a side shown up to be also-rans by Arsenal in the San Siro as they are far too old to be challenging for the championship. Teams like Fiorentina and Udinese would be totally embarrassed by foreign teams if they did qualify for champions league next season as they are not good enough to represent Italy.
Inter Milan for all their faults are the only team in Italy that can compete with the other powerhouses in Europe as they have the money and personnel, they just lack the manager. Juventus would have to overhaul what they have and change managers as well to stand a chance as they can only be competitive in a second rate championship that SerieA has sadly become but not in Europe.
Back to the Roma versus Manchester United match, it was cringe worthy to see players like Anderson, Owen Hargreaves, Park Ji-Sung just penetrate through Roma so easily when there is nothing penetrative about them. It just makes you wonder why the manager would persist with a player like David Pizarro and when was the last time that Taddei put in a good performance to warrant a starting place?
It was just too easy for United yesterday and I was shocked to read that some people thought Roma were not an embarrassment just because they were not trounced 7-1 again this season. There were even awarded a non-existent penalty but such is their fragile ego that Daniele De Rossi blasted it well over the bar.
It is just very sad to see a league that was once great degenerate into what it is nowadays with fans just talking about Inter Milan allegedly being favoured with sinister connotations as the standard of football so bad that watching Bundesliga seems more palatable.
I would like for them to get their act together and stop concentrating on conspiracies and start building teams worth watching with character and verve. Unfortunately the mentality is not like that, Roma for instance would actually think it is a step in the right direction that they got beat 2-0 and 1-0 and count the extremely marginal chances that they created.