Renaissance - Perugia Reborn

[CaptainCrazy]

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Associazione Calcistica Perugia Calcio


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12th July - 2011
This is my first day at the job. The job as manager at A.C. Perugia Calcio.
A football team of a long history having existed since 1905. But lately things have not gone very good.
Due to bankruptcy the club was dissolved, first in 2005 and then again in 2010 after being restarted once.
This time around, they managed to earn their promotion to Lega Pro Seconda Divisione from Serie D.
Now I am here to help continue the road to success, hopefully I'll manage.

Perugia is a rather large province and the people here deserve a team that they can be proud of and that is what will keep us going, fighting for the people who deserve it and push us, help us, cheer us on.
The local media is building the hype as well, once a Serie A club, they want us up there again and believe that we can make it, in due time. After our promotion in the last season, we are already predicted to finish first in this season as well, earning yet another promotion, so it is not like there is no preassure on my shoulders, people are expecting things from us and I have yet to deliver. That's why I understand their sceptisism concerning my skills.

I am a local boy, and remember watching the team play against giants like A.C. Milan, Roma, Juventus and Fiorentina at a time when we had players like Marco Materazzi, Hidetoshi Nakata and Federico Giunti. Watching with my dad, at The Stadio Renato Curi when we could afford, or at the local pub and now I want other young boys and girls to have something like that with their parent, it's what football is all about, passion, emotion, the joy of winning and sadness of losing, to cheer for your team no matter what, to always have hope, no matter how futile something seems.

This project is anything but futile, it's achievable.
So let us hope and fight for this, we are going back to the prestigious Serie A, better than ever, let us conquer Italy, let us conquer Europe.

Forza Perugia
Angelo Gentile, Manager

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This is what I have to work with, a rather large transfer budget as well as wage budget for a club at this level.
Of course this will aid in our challenge for the promotion, every cent will count in the end and I'll try to get the best players possible to join us.

First though, I needed a right hand man, and decided to hire Aldo Gardini as my Assistant Manager, he is an all-round kind of man, a jack of all trades, master on none. Except he's one of the most disciplined men I've ever met, and that will have a good impact on the squad, discipline is important to me and I want to build this team from the back, with a good defence. If you don't concede, you can't lose. So that is where I will be looking to improve the team right away, we have no proper fullbacks and we could really use another player to fight for a place in our central defence as well as between our posts.

Let us have a look at the players I consider to be our strongest at this moment.


Giampiero Clemente - Attacking Midfielder
A 33 year old offensive midfielder who joined shortly before I did.
What he lacks in speed he makes up for in technique, a master passer and a leathal finisher, he managed to score 14 times last season, in 33 games. Due to his age his athletisism has obviously gone downhill, so an offensive playmaker role may suit him perfectly.


Pierluigi Borghetti - Central Defender
A bit of a slow starter and not the strongest of defenders, at this level his marking skill more than makes up for it. I believe he will be able to stand in the right place at the right time often enough to make life hard for our opponents.
At 26 years old he still has some room to grow and mature, and is probably a player who can stay with us during a promotion.


Sebastián Bueno - Striker Trequartista
One of only two non-Italian players in the team. This 29 year old Argentinian is not very athletic either, like the other two 'star' players at the team, but just as they do, he makes up for it in technique, a good finisher and with a capability to spin around a defender or two, I hope he will be able to finish the teams offensive moves with a ball in the net. Also a capable player in the air whenever the opportunity presents itself for him.

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Pre-Season will consist of 6 friendly games against Italian competition, Serie B teams and lower. I mostly want to use these games to get the team comfortable playing as I want them to, and for any new players to settle in a little before the real deal starts.

28.7.2011 - Gubbio
31.7.2011 - Poggibonsi
5.8.2011 - Rimini
8.8.2011 - Spal
10.8.2011 - Juve Stabia
12.8.2011 - Viareggio

Nothing spectacular really, I will come back to you with the results before the season starts.
Now I got to go and do what I am payed for, wish me luck.



Angelo Gentile

 

[rennomillo]

will follow your journey

 

[CaptainCrazy]

14th August - 2011
We have now finished the pre-season friendly games. It had a bit of everything, 2 losses, 3 wins and a draw.
It's an okey result considering the condition of some of my players. I've noticed that most of them lack the stamina to play a full 90 minutes, let's just hope it's due to the tight schedule we had with many games in a short time period.



V. Gubbio
We lost our first game, against our parental club Gubbio, without making fools out of ourselves. We kept up fairly well and were unlucky that we didn't manage to get a goal or two, could've finished a draw if we just had been more efficient. But they play in Serie B now so we have some way to go until we reach that level.

V. Poggibonsi
A team from the Northern equivalent of our league, a better match than Gubbio for sure. This time we took the game to them, and although the possession percentage were equal at 50/50, we were the only team creating any chances at all, and scoring two as well. One from Borghetti and another from my new signing Carlo Coppari. A good win with some good performances.

V. Rimini
A loss in a game that could go either way, but should've gone neither. The same amount of chances for both, the same amount of possesion, we had a ball hitting the woodwork, they got a goal past our keeper. Even though we lost I think we put up a good fight, I can't really be angry with the boys for not getting this, our form is getting better and that's what matters now.

V. Spal
A team in the league above ours. We managed to win and certainly deserved it. Once again the amount of possession were close but we had a bunch of chances this time, and got two goals in, and managed to hit the woodwork twice, they're lucky we only scored twice.
In other aspects the game was horrible, 3 injuries for us, let's hope they are minor ones so the fellows will be ready when the season kicks off.

V. Juve Stabia
Another Serie B club but this time we managed to get away with a win. They had us on the defence for most of the game but some good play from our keeper and defence, kept their tally down to one. While some clinical strinking, and an own goal, managed to get us tied and then ahead, to win the game. Well done indeed but yet another injury for us, Sebastián Bueno this time, let us pray our physio team will have him back in training quickly.

V. Viareggio
A boring draw in a game that deserved no more. Both teams created few chances and most of the battles were fought in the midfield with neither team winning. This was against a team in a higher league though, so in my mind, it was a small victory for us to once again keep the score down at zero. Francesco Mocarelli had to be substituted after a challenge in the 36th but from what I hear, it is nothing serious.

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Transfers
I have done some scouting around in the country, looking for players to sign or get here on loan.
Soo far I've managed to sign three.

Stefano Pardini - Goalkeeper from No Club
An experienced goalkeeper at 35 years of age. I singed him for the season in hope that he can bring some stability between the posts until we, hopefully, get promoted at the end of the season when I'll look for a better, and younger, reinforcement for this position.

Edoardo Lorenzini - Left Defender from Bassano
21 year old defender with some skills lacking from our left wing. Namely any defensive skill at all. His strengths are his tackling, heading and overall natural fitness. He'll provide some security at our back and hopefully he'll make some progress here.

Carlo Coppari - Right, Central Offensive Midfielder from Mezzocorona
A 22 year old winger with a lot of flair and a pretty good strike at the ball. A technically gifted lad, who can help us maintain an amount of unpredictability up front, a player who can do something unexpected. I have high hopes for him and he's done well so far in the pre-season, I'll try to motivate him to continue in that spirit.

Carlo Coppari - One of the most recent Perugia signings
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[insanity]

I am also playing Perugia but I am almost at 3rd season. Will follow your story .
3 tips - Mohammed Guilraz (37 goals for me 1st season; 18 assists at 2nd when I moved him on the flang); do not relay field - teams will find it very difficult to play against you at Renato Curi; play counter football if you would like quick promotions

 

[CaptainCrazy]

I am also playing Perugia but I am almost at 3rd season. Will follow your story .
3 tips - Mohammed Guilraz (37 goals for me 1st season; 18 assists at 2nd when I moved him on the flang); do not relay field - teams will find it very difficult to play against you at Renato Curi; play counter football if you would like quick promotions

Ah nice, how far have you come in those three seasons?
I never even considered relaying the field haha, but it seems I missed on Mohammed, he signed for a spanish team.

 

[CaptainCrazy]

[URL=http://imgur.com/xS86S][/URL]

August
In August we had three competative games to play, all in the Serie C Cup Group 1.
The group consisted of five teams total and each team would face eachother once.
First of we played against Pergocrema.




A game not as close as the scoreline suggests. We kept piling on the pressure on them but they still managed to score two times from a total of 4 shots in the entire game, some poor goalkeeping and defending made this game a bit more dramatic than it should've been. They were efficient, that's all, we kept on the attack but only managed to score twice ourselves, luckily enough a late own goal saved us and it's a good three points.




Great efficiency on their part and really bad goalkeeping from our part made this game a total walk in the park for Spal, whom we beat in the pre-season. They had four shots on goal and managed to get them all past Pardini. All in all a bad performance by us, they were very unforgiving.



Again we created more chances but were inefficient in our efforts, all while they were 100% efficient and manage to score twice in two shots on goal. Perhaps my goalkeeper needs to be changed since Pardini obviously isn't in form.

 

[CaptainCrazy]

[URL=http://imgur.com/xS86S][/URL]


September
August wasn't a very strong month for us, so let's put that behind us and look forward. We are going to play some more games in the Cup Group and also it's the season premiere in the league. We all have high hopes for this season and we have faith in our ability to make it a really good one. The transfer window has now closed, but before that happened I managed to get some players on loan, and some other free transfers.


Transfers

Stefano Castellani - Striker from Empoli
A young striker, 19 years old, joining us on loan from Empoli, he looks really got on practices and I believe that he can bring that to the field when it counts as well. He's a really hard worker with decent pace, a bit on the weak side physically but once again a more technical player. If he does well here I will look in to the possibility to get him here on a more permanent basis.

Leonardo Bianchi - Central Midfielder from Empoli
Another Empoli loan, the same age as Stefano and a talent as well. Has a good eye for the game and a good right foot. Not the most defensive midfielder but will be more of a playmaker when he plays, a good passer. His weaknesses are his ability to make fast decisions, he's also a bit too hesitant when fighting for the ball and that might have something to do with his small physical frame and slender build. Not much body muscle.

Paolo Barzaghi - Central Defender Free Transfer
Came for free at 19 years of age. A decent defender who'll serve mostly as backup and to learn and grow. He has potential but is not quite there yet. I will probably have to create a special training program for some of the young players as this guy is another one on the weak side of the scale. A work in progress

Matteo Ciccanti - Left Defender Free Transfer
Another young backup player for the left wing. I got a bit scared when Edoardo Lorenzini got injured soo early in his career here that I decided to pick a substitute for him as quickly as possible. A hard worker with decent defensive capabilities and growth potential.

Damiano Zenoni - Right Defender/Midfielder Free Transfer
A very experienced player who will bring much needed talent to the team. Have played one game for the Italian National team and has several years in Serie A behind him, with spells at Atalanta, Udinese and Parma. A real stubborn mule, hard working and great at the defense as well as offence. A natural decrease in speed over the last couple of years but hopefully we can keep him fit here and he might just be the best player on the team right now.

Edoardo Pacini - Right Midfielder Free Transfer
Is here as a backup player in the offensive, a rather pacey and technically gifted player with no strenght what so ever. Can look a bit lazy sometimes but that is something I'll try to motivate him out of. A good crosser with good balance.

Damiano Zenoni - Prolific player joining Perugia in their fight for promotion

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Season Premiere

Here we go, first game of the league season, against Paganese, wish us luck.



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A great performance by the lads! We were dominating the game completely, creating opportunity after opportunity, relentlessly going on the offensive. This time we managed to score as well, a whole five times, with a hat-trick from Daniel Margarita for good measure. We picked up two injuries though, Damiano Zenoni, did I jinx him? And Sebastián Bueno. I'll have a look later to see if it's anything serious.

Damiano seems to be out for a little less than two weeks, while Bueno will be gone for about four. Not good.



A cup match we managed to win, not by much but still a win. It didn't count though, since we were too far behind to qualify for the next round. Too bad to be out soo early, good thing is we can focus on the promotion. We deserved the win none the less but only got it due to a late own goal. FUN fact, we concieved four new injuries, most annoying one on last games Hat-Trick'er Margarita but it seems to be a minor one.



A dull draw in a match with not much going on. We got off to a bad start and conceded already in the first minute. Managed to take one goal back in first half over-time but in the second half nothing more happened.



A close game in all aspects that we still managed to lose. Margarita were our only goalscorer, good for him. They were efficient enough in a 6 minute period to have us beaten, we fought for a equalizer but they defended all too well. Another two injuries this game, and I'm seriously starting to smell a curse. We have a few too many injuries in a short amount of time. Not good at all and not a very good start of the season.



Second loss in a row and I'm not very pleased. This was the most boring game I've ever seen, we only got 3 shots totally, and a single one on goal, great efficiency though with that single shot going in. They scored twice after us though and managed to keep us at bay for the rest of the game, annoyingly so.



Third loss in a row and I'm already feeling the sceptisism from the fans, not too bad yet but still, not feeling good about letting them down. It's not like our opponents get a lot of chances but they still manage to score, after this game I'll try out another goalkeeper, one of the young ones that were here when I came, hopefully they'll do a better job at keeping the ball out of our net.

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Summary



A bad month for us with three losses in a row and we find ourselves far down in the league. We will have to pick up some form really soon so we don't risk falling too far behind to catch up, with the team we have we should have the skill to do so, I'll just have to throw them some motivational speeches and start tweaking the tactics a bit perhaps.

The good side on the Player Statistics are Daniel Margarita's 4 goals and Giampiero Clemente's 89% Pass Completion. Margarita also has the second highest average rating in the entire league soo far.

And a nice thing to end this messege.



And here is my current tactic and first team,those who are not injured.



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Angelo Gentile

 

[AndrewACM22]

Looks great so far, defiantly following. As an AC Milan fan and Serie A follower, I love the Italian stories, not too many on the site, so keep it up!

 

[insanity]

I won everything for now and I am going to be playing Seria B (still looking for players - 2nd day). The hard part here in the lower leagues is the selection and the scouts. And as I told you, you might think about a more conservative way of playing, perhaps changing to rigid and counter. The majority of my matches are won by the minimal 1:0 and my goals are either by a poacher move, long shot (Clemente scores a lot) or a set peace.

 

[CaptainCrazy]

Season Re-Cap

Now we've finished the first season with me leading the team, and boy was it emotional.
We had a terrible start with and early spell of 7 games without any wins, five losses and two draws made sure we were far down in the table, I was lucky the board didn't decide to kick me out then and there, and hopefully they're happy they didn't either.

October
October continued as September finished, one draw and two losses in the first three, we then managed a win just to get our hopes up, but that amounted to little when we lost the very next game and then drew once more. We still sunk deeper and deeper and I started to think that this terrible start would make it difficult for us to turn it around even if we started winning some points now. Atleast we managed to get three points in the last October game against Isola Liri, a narrow 2-1 win.

November
With a win behind us we started the new month with a bit more hope, we had played pretty good in most of our games even though we didn't win, this might only be a try too look at things at the bright side, but I decided to try that approach atleast and it seemed to work at the players who didn't seem to get too demoralized just yet.
Now, we started the month against Vibonese, a pretty weak team soo far, but so were we. After goals from Carlo Coppari and Marco Moscati, we managed to win the game 2-0 and earned three desperately needed points.
Finally we had two wins in a row, and that form seemed to do us good, next up were L'Aquila who we managed to beat 3-1, and after that Gavorrano 2-1, that made it four wins in a row and we had started our slow climb up the table.
Next up were Aversa Normanna, an average team we had confidence in beating, perhaps we took them a bit too lightly and they shocked us with a 3-0 win, we got our feet back to the ground, that's for sure. November ended with yet another win, this time again Ebolitana, 2-0.

December
Only three games in December, then we're off for some christmas vacation, managed to get 6 points out of 9, only losing to Melfi. Now I'm off to spend christmas with my folks here in town, before getting back to our struggle to the top!

Merry Christmas everyone!


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January
Finally back to football, christmas and new year celebrations in all it's glory, but football is my passion, and my family's as well, this is when we really bond.
The season started again at January 8th, and we got off to a good start, 3-1 against Paganese and another step in the right direction. We followed it up with two wins and another draw, a good run soo far.

February
Two new wins at the start of the month and we were unbeaten in 7 games before we met the league leaders Milazzo and lost 1-2

March
Then we went up against Chieti and lost with 1-5, that left a bad taste in my mouth and the lads got a real talking to, it got better against Aprilia but we still only managed to draw them 2-2. After that we got on a bit better with three 1-0 win in a row, we were now in a play-off spot wich assured us the chance to get a promotion match against another team in the play-off spots, those were the 3-6 and the 1-2 placed teams got direct promotion.

April
Many games were to be played in april, seven to be exact, and this is where we all were playing like gods, we won them all, and we had a run of ELEVEN games without losing, ten of them wins, this fantastic winning streak got us to second place, only behind Milazzo, trailing them by two points.

March
Last game of the season and we have already gotten promoted, the board of directors are still a bit unhappy about us not leading though, and they were still disappointed when we only managed to draw the last game and ended up two points behind Milazzo in the end.
I still kept my job though and now we're going in to the next season with a bit lowe expectations and pressure, wich will fit me well, since I'm still rather new, I'll enjoy some wiggle room.

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Special Mentions

Giampiero Clemente - Fans player of the year, 36 Games played, 19 Goals Scored and 7 Assists.

Giampiero Clemente - Voted Player of the Year by the Perugia Fans and came third in the scoring league

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Sorry for doing such a hasty re-cap of the season, but I got soo caught up in the game that I didn't have time to post here. I am really glad that I managed a promotion but I have to admit to a bit of cheating, in the last long winning streak of the season, I "had" to re-load once due to a two game loss in a row managed to get me fired even though I had secured a play-off spot. I didn't want the game to end right then and there so I cheated, sad but true.

Now I will have to do some real re-arrenging in the team as some of the key-players last year are getting terribly old. Including Clemente and the goalkeeper I let go.

Hope I'll see you again for the next season where I'll try to get some more frequent updating.

Thank you all.

Christopher Warås Harjo





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[insanity]

Beatiful
I would like you to take your attention to players like Materazzi, Ciano, Malafronte, Dannieli who brough me the promotion to Seria B. Good luck in the next season, bro.

 

[TamMcCann]

Nice Story, I will follow.