Serie A Shopping in the USSR
By: Marco Stucazzo | January 26th, 2010
The success of players like Alexander Kolarov, Marek Hamsik, Stevan Jovetic and Mirko Vucinic has inspired many Serie A teams to take a longer look when going East on scouting trips. Nothing new as Italian squads have long been scouring the ex-USSR like an arms traficant in 1991-92.
Here are the most recent findings :
After Palermo picked up, 19 year old Georgian Levan Michedlidze this summer now it’s Sampdoria and Fiorentina getting in the mix of things.
Fiorentina have snagged Serbian starlet, Adem Ljajic from Partizan Belgrade. The formalities concerning his move from the Serbian Champions are done, having passed the medical with the Italian side. In the meantime, Stevan Jovetic’s ex-squad receive a cool €6m for their years of nurturing.
La Viola jumped infront of Russian side Rubin Kazan and Ukranian outfit Dynamo Kyiv, who both made a €8m offer, with the players blessing in their bargaining bag. The Partizan Belgrade midfielder, 19, was lined-up for a big-money move to Old Trafford last season. But the deal fell through when United boss Alex Ferguson decided against taking up the €10m option to buy him.
Clearly not enough to scare off Fiorentina ; “He is a quality player. It’s remeniscent of the signing of Jovetic – he has great potential.It was a very intelligent signing by director Pantaleo Corvino”
Srecko Katanec, former Sampdoria player and now United Arab Emirates coach, agrees with Prandelli ;
“I know Ljajic very well having seen him play as a child, and in my opinion he is not just a player that can make a difference even at this age, but is destined to become a world-class player, owing to his variety of shots, he is physically strong and exceptional. Bear in mind he is only 19,”
Corvino has a great average when hitting against Eastern pitchers ; Zdravko Kuzmanovic and Stefan Jovetic were his most recent Eastern pick ups.
However, in 2000, he signed some dude named Dimitar Berbatov only to see the deal fall through at the last moment. He still managed to bring in Valeri Bojinov (whom he discovered at the age of 14), and Mirko Vucinic in his time at Lecce.
Inspired by all this, Sampdoria have jumped on the Slavic bandwagon ; Goran Bregovic, a Gypsy Big Band and all the trimmings. Samp have captured Serbian youngster Stefan Scepovic from OFK Belgrade.
The striker known as Scepa arrives full of eastern promise on an loan deal, but Samp have the option to make it a permanent transfer at the end of season. Scepovic has been starring in the Serbian U21 a la Bosko Jankovic.
Livorno’s president Aldo Spinelli sucks at geography so he didn’t make it all the way East but did manage to snag 20 year old Jurgen Prustch from Sturm Garz, seemingly the next Austrian wonder kid that’s not Herman – The Terminator – Maier. I guess that makes him the next Engelbert Konig ?
Now how about a look at Hungary after the impressive recent displays of their U21 and U20 squads ?
Category: News
Comments
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excellent, excellent post.
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the best is Alan Dzagoev from CSKA.his playing style is similar to Tottis(as a trequartista,of course)
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@Marco
All is well Marco, except one detail; since when is/was former Yugoslavia part of the USSR? Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia all constituted ex-Yugoslavia, which most definitely was NOT part of the USSR. Ever. In fact, it was the most unique country in that it was neither part of the west (NATO) nor east (Warsaw Pact), but was instead “unaligned” and well funded by both east and west to remain that way.
Might not be a bad idea to take a peak at an atlas, or crack open a history book every now and then…
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It’s not the success of the players – it’s the price tag.
Good players can come from every country, but the relative economies of Eastern European countries to Western Europe makes the first contract of a young player a financially safe one to take a chance on – even a bargain.
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only a matter of time before that changes MAD…
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Totally agree.
And then there will be another place that Western European teams will get their youth from – assuming that UEFA dominance stays in the West.
Once, the trend was South America. And the supply end has caught up to the demand – economically with agents and third party business.
But right now, there is a lot of momentum to trend to the East because there is less money to spend on those third and sometimes fourth parties.
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@Axis : It was only for the sake of the headline and seeing as there’s a Georgian in there, i felt at peace with my geographically and historically misleading headline\picture combo.Also,writing USSR istead of ex – eastern european communist countries close to the iron curtain but not part of the USSR, is a little less time consuming
I’m a big fan of Tito’s ”fuck you” to Stalin so I apologize for getting your historically accurate yet condescending panties in a bunch.
MAD : It’s not the success of the players – it’s the price tag… A little bit from column A and a little bit from column B. Dead on about the third and sometimes fourth parties thing evn though the Becali Brothers in Romania have shown us that this might still happen.
Ricci : Grazie
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@Marco
Haha, well then, tip o’ the hat to you good sir! -
In general though, the problems of ex-Yu football are many, and it is as a result of all these problems that so many young talents are being made readily available to “western” European clubs.
The ex-Yu leagues are now in shambles. The decimation of the once great country was mirrored by the decimation of the once great league and the subsequent creation of 2 shitty and 6 ultra-shitty leagues – the two shitty leagues being the Serbian and Croatian 1st divisions.
While the amount of talent per capita is still some of the highest in the world – for example, FK Partizan’s youth school was named by UEFA 2nd in Europe, only behind Ajax, which is pretty incredible.
The main problem then, is the amount of corruption that exists in football, which in part manifests itself through the fact that clubs are selling 17 and 18 year olds in order to “cover budgets,” where in reality, functionaries are lining their own pockets, because the clubs, on paper, are still property of “the people.” The precedent, and hopefully the turning point, will be the eminent passing of the legislation about property ownership in sport. The idea is that this will pave the way for private owners to come in and invest/buy clubs, because their newly acquired property will be truly their own, to do with as they see fit. Unfortunately, too many shadow figures and “behind the scenes” players are profiting too much for such legislation to be passed.
As a result, the once great Partizan and Red Star have miserable records in Europe. Opponents that begged only one question in the past – Will they go home with only 5 goals in the bag? – and which served as “warm-up” are now true opponents, or even equals (which is fucking sad). Anonymous Africans and South Americans are brought in, while ultra talented youth is sold abroad.
The middle-men, or corrupt managers, are also partly to blame, because they start filling the young players’ minds with fairy-tales of glory, which further stimulates them to make shitty decisions (a la Ljajic & ManU). Without the old restriction that a player couldn’t go abroad until age 28, it’s impossible to create a strong league, because all the talent is being siphoned out of the country. As a result, domestic football suffers.
So instead of being in the top of European football, where we’ve always been and where we belong, we are helping everyone else get there instead (we = Serbia):
Mateo Radovanović 1991. keeper – Panathinaikos
Ivan Babović 1992. keeper – OlympiakosVladimir Ranković 1993. defender – Bayern München
Uroš Ćosić 1992. defender – CSKA Moskva
Milan Milanović 1991. defender – Lokomotiv Moskva
Uroš Vitas 1992. defender – AnderlechtJevrem Kosnić 1993. MF – Internazionale
Aleksandar Ignjovski 1991. MF – 1860 München
Predrag Stevanović 1991. MF – Schalke
Alen Stevanović 1991. MF – Internazionale
Adem Ljajić 1991. MF – Fiorentina
Filip Djuričić 1992. MF – Hereenven
Nemanja Gudelj 1992. MF – NAC Breda
Dejan Janjatović 1992. MF – Bayern MünchenDanijel Aleksić 1991. forward – Genoa
Marko Mitrović 1992. forward – Chelsea
Nikola Sarić 1991. forward – LiverpoolP.S. Kuzmanovic was born in Switzerland and came to La Viola from Basel, if I’m not mistaken, so he really doesn’t belong in the list. Likewise, Vucinic came to Italy from Niksic or Sutjeska, at age 16, and started with Lecce in C1 when he turned 17, so he’s practically a product of Zeman/Lecce and not Montenegro/Serbia/ex-Yu.
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