Don Ricardino: Roma Fear Boro

Posted by on March 9, 2006 7:59 AM | Permalink

LET`S talk Boro with the king of capuccinno and calcio culture.

Yesterday I was been chatting with James Richardson, the Armani-clad face of Italian football on small screens in England for over a decade. That's one of the plusses in this job; you get to shamelessly namedrop. And you get to collect the phone numbers of the rich and vaguely famous from Chubby Effing Brown to the Honeymonster.

James - or Giovanni Ricardino as he is known in our house - is the Godfather of Serie A as far as most culturally literate English football fans are corncerned. Suave, articulate, enthusiastic and well informed. Very well informed. All those names and statistics he reels off on Gazetta are not scripted by some lowly Italian office boy. He really knows his subject.

A simple question about the style of football that had taken mighty Roma to eleven successive wins in one of the toughest leagues in the world had him recalling a complex string of formations used against different oppositions in a series of games this season compared to last, the results they produced and by way of illustration he threw in comparisions with the Milan of van Basten and Gullit, Barcelona and the legendary Hungarian side of 1953. He knows his stuff.

The big plus for Boro fans is that the man probably best placed to judge the relative strengths of the English and Italian games believes that Steve McClaren's men have a decent chance of an upset against Roma.

Richardson hints that Roma are starting to wobble, are missing the inspirational presence of injured Francesco Totti (a man who he describes as a collusus that as far as the fans are concerned embodies the club in way that in Boro terms translates as a hybrid of Mogga, Juninho, Wilf Mannion and Yakubu) - and crucially he says they have the tradtional deep seated Italian fear of the robust blood and thunder English style.

He insists that a terror of English teams is deep in the psyche of the Azzurri. They fear the never-say-die attitude, the thundering tackles, the breakneck pace, gruelling workrate and the spirit and commitment of English sides and know that the tempo and steel they bring to the game has the potential to negate any technical advantages the Italians may have.

Steve McClaren may just have been talking to Richardson too. At the pre-match press confernce he has outlined his plans for the game - and they echo all of Roma's darkest fears as outlined above.

The boss is demanding that Boro "'impose themselves early", "match Roma physically", "break up their play", "unsettle them" and "take the game to them" and "make it a very English game". He is also hoping for a "very strong referee". This is of course football code for "we are going to kick seven bells out of them and hoof it into the box."

So expect more than a culture clash tonight. A thundering first minute throat high tackle from Mad Dog or Clattermole sending their keeper flying as he comes out to collect may be exactly what is needed to galvanise the crowd and get the Riverside bouncing. And Roma shrinking. If we can rattle them early on all bets are off.

FORZA BORO!

*There's a full interview with James Richardson and more of Mac's battle plans exclusively in the Gazette today as part of the big build up to what should be a cracking game.