Football Italia
@footballitalia
·
2h
Bologna are interested in making a move for Toronto FC winger Federico Bernardeschi, keen to bring him back to Serie A.
Football Italia
@footballitalia
·
2h
Bologna are interested in making a move for Toronto FC winger Federico Bernardeschi, keen to bring him back to Serie A.
^^
Maybe. Pinball is a decent guy, he's around, seems always at the ready to be useful. Dunfield's trying to inspire, turn things around, see what sticks. So why not be a little corny and lean into that child-like ye old 'Major League' motivational antic stratagem?
Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/MichaelSingh94/status/1679549243223166977
Last edited by Mr. Inbetween; 07-14-2023 at 07:42 AM.
The internet/twitter, love this follow-up btw...
Terry 'Lasso' Dunfield...
Check out this tweet at https://twitter.com/TurtsFC/status/1679551680776380418
Let him go. Use his salary on a DP #9. I feel his relationship with locker room and club is too toxic now. Plus Insigne seems to play better without Berna.Originally Posted by reggie
Total TFC
@Total_TFC
·
8m
The first meeting between Bernardeschi's agents and Bologna management has already taken place. He is open to a return to a Italy.
[via
@DAZN_IT
seems to be some smoke here
]
Looks like Hernandez is actively removing all the negative influences in that Athletic article from the team. Good move.
Wonder if Insigne stays or he gets jettisoned too.
Last edited by Ultra & Proud; 07-14-2023 at 08:37 AM.
How interested do you think a TFC player is in a pep talk from someone who reports to the same guy that is responsible for the problem?
Does that feel like a setup for an open heartfelt dialogue about how to fix things?
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
Please let this bernardeschi to bologna deal happen.
Would be a godsend.
Moving on bernardeschi and bringing in a DP striker would be incredible business.
Last edited by leedsandTFC; 07-14-2023 at 08:50 AM.
I think I agree, but I'm also sort of wanting to see what happens if he gets interested again, and what it looks like with our new midfield. He seems to be an emotional player, and checked out in frustration for a lot of the season. These changes may get more out of him. And if Jloome's intel is correct, they're working on a DP striker with the assumption he's still going to be on the team. So doesn't seem he's preventing adding a DP striker.
That said, I really don't like players angling to changes coaches.
Why in the world would NER trade Blessing for MAK? This makes no sense
Funny this guys Bob’s 3rd son
I am all for passion when it is used correctly to fuel the player in a positive way. I liked his enthusiasm when he joined and all that. But if his passion is leading to issues and selfish behaviour then maybe he would be happier elsewhere and we would be better off with another player in his place. Maybe, like a number of players from Europe, he underestimated MLS and what it takes to play here.
I think Insigne stays. He has been far more of a professional then Berna.
Use Berna's 6M a year to get Insigne someone to play with.
Yup. If this was another league, a new coach would come in and bench him for what happened in the lead up to Bob being fired. That's what new coaches do with perceived locker room cancers (like what Tuchel did with Pulisic). But since MLS has only 3 designated players, it makes it much harder.
Ultimately I think insigne is a far more talented playmaker and player, and I don't think bernardeschi is quick enough for his current playing style to work consistently in mls.
Fullback have had the measure of him for ages.
In all honesty I don't think they have the pitchforks out for Bill. We do because we've dealt with his shit for years but most of them haven't. It's not like Bill intentionally tanked the team or cheaped out on the roster. He is just a boob who trusts his buddies too much and was too hands off so his pals screwed up over and over. They most likely see him as a high up suit making money deals and not involved (enough maybe) in the day to day.
Like at a warehouse I know; the director was an idiot who slept in his office & his warehouse manager was a moron who had no clue and together they fucked up everything and then blamed everyone down the chain. They were hated by everyone because they didn't set the teams up to meet their objectives. However when the president came in nobody blamed him because it was known he isn't hands on or part of operations. He is a money guy only so it wasn't his direct fault that these issues were happening but rather people under him who he may or may not have hired. Indirectly responsible yes, directly responsible no. That makes a difference in workplaces I've been in.
My Intel is based on them adding FB back into a list of players I'd sent my source.
I sent a list basically saying "we only have six or seven potential starters, the rest are either too young or bad for club," and my rationales why. As always, I framed it as 'this is sort of where the fan base stands, generally.'
My list -- which they said they had no argument with -- included Insigne but not Bernardeschi, who I suggested was too much of an enfant terrible to ever be anything but distracting.
The answer back was basically "but if we can get him playing for the team and not trying to do it all himself, he'll be great, because he has great technique."
So it's not like they're bubbling over with enthusiasm.
But they certainly did seem to want the DPs to work out, still, which I suspect may be as much reputational as anything else.
EDIT: I'd also say Schirra may have gotten wind that TFC is calling around about two forwards -- as I know other journos are inquiring who they're after -- and put two-and-two together and gotten three. He may assume they're after BOTH to replace the DPs. But that's not what I'm hearing.
Also they haven't used the word DP around another striker. I suspect they're angling that way from a few statements but it could well be a TAM-level signing, taking Richie's spot, or a u22 DP.
Last edited by jloome; 07-14-2023 at 09:42 AM.
I would say this is pretty much bang on.
Having said that, there do seem to be some pressures he's facing that might go beyond 'I have to fire people?' It may be that he's had some quiet word from above about the DPs not working out. It may also be, however, that putting Hernandez in place and him getting a turnaround going is enough to assuage them.
Yeah absolutely. If we could somehow get out of this without kneecapping ourselves financially it would be huge.
Thanks for clarifying.
Disagree. This isn't a typical workplace: it is a world filled with family members, agents, lawyers, posse members... all chirping. Plus, these players are smart: in general, you need a lot of IQ to go all the way in pro sports.
If I were to assume anything at all, it's that the players "get it" more than the average fan does, ie they hold Manning more responsible than the average bum in seat at BMO does
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
Yeah, this isn't the case, dude. I've interviewed dozens of pro athletes over the years. And I mean at length, at times. Seven out of 10 know next to nothing about anything, other than their sport and whatever the EA sports version of their sport is. The Dr. Randy Greggs and Steve Nashs of the world are few and far between.
Even the ones who project intellectual curiosity, typically, are cleaving closer to the magical thinking side of the equation than the logic and reason side.
IQ is based in comprehension and speed of processing. Athletic excellence is based on memory and repetition. A guy who uses the latter to behave with rote speed and reaction time on the pitch isn't using comprehension or "seeing ahead", he's filtering the best option from a very short list.
I once interviewed Jim Bouton for three hours. He was considered a bright man by athletic standards because of the "insight" in ball four. He was not a bright man. Aggressive, yes. Confident? Unbelievably so.
Generally speaking, most exceptionally bright people I've talked to express their intelligence not in confidence but in lack thereof. They realize that, as much as they seem to know compared to other people, it's a fraction of what is out there that is still misunderstood and effectively unknown. They are boundaried by the humility of their own limitations.
That's not most pro athletes.
(I'd also make the point that most highly intelligent people aren't particularly successful. They're functioning at that level, often, due to other limits in emotional or neurological development that prevent the sort of social fluency and fluidity success requires.)
EDIT: I should clarify that on the other principle issue, while I don't think the pitch forks are out for him from the BOARD, there have definitely been multiple internal factions of management, players and agents involved in this -- at least three distinctly by my count -- and the only logical conclusion I can reach is that staff BELOW him are most definitely not fans of Manning.
As you put it, the " family members, agents, lawyers, posse members... all chirping" are most definitely chirping.
Last edited by jloome; 07-14-2023 at 10:51 AM.
https://twitter.com/NicoSchira/statu...VKZYz_0mA&s=19
Not sure if this guy is creditable.
He isn't but then this isn't eaxctly an out there kind of story either. I expected this since that Athletic story happened and his body language didn't suggest anything different.
It's been a failed experiment with Insigne and Berna. The sooner we find a way to move on from both of them, the better off we will be in the long run.
It's time for this organization to focus on building a sustainable, contending club and to stop worrying about player nationalities.
I have a feeling Insigne will get another shot with a different and presumably better suited cast. Wouldn't look good on Manning to have both of them fail especially the one with a warehouse full of $200 Drake hoodies laying around unsold.
He's nicking it from a short in Gazzetto Dello Sport, which is a traditional sports newspaper there. Everyone in Italy has picked it up as a short, but they're all quoting GDS as the source.
It's probable his agents are floating a trial balloon, putting out something to see if other clubs show interest. Even if he hadn't requested it, they would do this. Their client's value is their value, as they work on percentages, and staying here is killing his brand.
If they get it more than the average fan then they would know that Manning's issue was appointing meatheads to assemble/manage the team and for giving the keys to Bob (in general and for MB being captain at the same time). He didn't directly do anything other than find the DPs. Maybe some other guys might blame him for not vetting Berna well enough but who knows?
These guys aren't smart enough to think of the complexities of MLS roster rules and they probably wouldn't care about our overspend so far. The main issue they might have was him not addressing the CF issue until now.
Which is what scores me the next time we go to the well. Manning’s name is certainly dirt at this point and our chances of being Solteldo’d again are high.
OK I buy this. I guess we will see.
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”
I think Insigne with a balanced squad is a potential MVP candidate, still, in this league. He has that ability.
But the combination of sleight stature and no one working at his speed is making it difficult to get the best out of him. He's not a weavy attacker, like Seba or Hany Mukhtar or Almeda, but his outside shooting, passing and ability to beat several on the dribble are all elite level.
If he had a DP striker ahead of him, a few more Oso-quality (i.e. mls elite but not necessarily DP or TAM) midfielders, he'd probably be good for 10-15 goals a season and the same in assists, because they'd all either draw attention away from him, or be left open because of him.
But our players right now have many flaws that are making that hard to achieve.
Sapong's movement is truly, truly, terrible. He is more likely to impede another player's progress or space than he is to find the right spot. He has no lateral movement to spread the defenders or beat a trap, he has no consistency in his movement in the box, he's static in the box.
Frankly, this is true of all of our strikers. I'm not sure why we never seem to employ coaches who were strikers, but whoever we have surely is not doing a job. And the reason we know that is that our young players have the same shit movement.
Watch Teemo Pukki's first two games for Minnesota. There's striker who knows how to work defenders. He'll drift back and forth laterally between them, going just past their blind shoulder, making them each take a step or two wider, until one of them cheats and gives him space between them. And then he's gone to wherever the ball is likely to be.
Our strikers, to a man, have no idea how to do this.
Every good striker in Europe over the age of 14 knows how to do this.
It must be very odd, sometimes, for foreign fans to watch MLS and wonder how so much of it can be so athletic and highlight-reelish, and so much of it looks like most of the players started playing at age 18 or something.
MLS players, below the elite, break every fundamental kids are taught in Europe about football. They don't have their heads up throughout, checking around them. Watch our midfielders, then watch Coello, who grew up in elite Spanish dev clubs. He watches the play around the rest of the pitch all the time, because he's reading shape, so that he knows where the space is likely to be, in the same way as a quarterback has to read a defence to see where receivers will have the most space to catch a pass.
Watch when he traps a ball. It's nearly always instep, even when he's bringing it down hard and fast. Because the entirety of the length of the instep can be turned downwards, meaning the 'trap' is unlikely to squirt away.
Now watch Akinola, Sapong, Kaye trap balls (ok, not MAK anymore here, but it'll still happen at NE, mark my words). They trap more often than not with the SOLE of their boot. That's fine sometiomes, but the reason kids in europe are taught never to do it is that there isn't as much surface area OVER the ball, so there's more chance for it to bounce loose.... which one of them does seemingly every game.
I think Insigne could be a major player in this league, but lots of good athletes can't really "play down" to the level they're at. If they expect him to have Giovinco-like success making defenders look foolish, that's usually not going to happen. He's too set in working with a good team. So we need to give him a good team... because no one's picking up $15M a year in guaranteed compensation.
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