Allegri and Matri-Whos Next?

By: Jeremy | May 30th, 2008

Cagliari obviously had something up their sleave when they played financial hardball with Ballardini after his magical performance keeping Cagliari in Serie A for yet another year. Rather then reward him with a new well paying contract, they instead hired former Cagliari player Massimo Allegri, who just pulled off his own magical performance of getting Sassuolo promoted to Serie B for the first time in their history.

I have slowly come to realize that being a European soccer fan requires an ability not to bond with players who play for your team as the turnover is simply too much to take, especially for a smaller club. This goes for managers as well. I wanted Ballardini to stay if only to bring continued stability to the team and to reward him for what he did last year. However, we are like an NBA pro team who sucks and as soon as the latest hot college coach emerges, they are brought up to hopefully bring the same success at the next level. Allegri is that guy. He is a young up and coming coach who is ready for the opportunity. The fact he has ties to Cagliari(any Cagliari fan remembers the 93-94 season and the UEFA Cup run which Allegri was a part of) is important and he has to have that extra passion like Zola does. If he can coach, which he clearly can, lets give him a shot. He may be another Giampaolo, but he may be better. Its a risk worth taking. If we are going to move to the next level, we must take risks as we did to let Suazo go and bring in a younger player like Acquafresca. If Allegri is the Acquafresca of young coaches, he may not be here long, but Id rather have him leave on a successful note then getting fired for failing. His youth should be able to make a good match with the players and they will want to play for him.

On the player front, while it was not my first choice of actual news, we now own Alessandro Matri outright as we bought him from Milan. He clearly would never play for Milan so if we got him cheap, which we did or we would not have bought him, its a good move. He adds depth and if he can learn to play an attacking midfielder role behind a striker who can finish, he can be an asset. If he was signed because we are selling Acquafresca and counting on him to score more goals as our main striker, then it was a bad move. Lets just hope this was a simple transaction to give us another option without changing our serious goal of keeping Acquafresca or obtaining a real striker. Matri could flourish in the right role, but he is an utter failure as a first choice Serie A striker, even on a relegation level club. Lets hope management gets it.

Ultimately the coach is not going to make a huge difference and I can understand the switch as we now have a great up and coming coach. However, we used to have Giampaolo and he scored a gig with Siena so have we really improved with this coaching carousel. Not really, but I wont care if we get the right players.

That situation is still to be determined, but this was not bad news and it shows we are active trying to solidify the club for next year. The more pieces to play with the better. Matri still has not returned the kick medic I sent him so maybe he is working hard this offseason.