Simone Pepe Needs A Hug

The kid’s self-esteem is circling the bowl, about to go down the toilet. Serie A provides deliciously inane quotations on an hourly basis. Today’s wasn’t really funny or amusing, just bit of an eye popper. Pepe plays for Udinese, which has gone from being in-form to a damn good team over the 6 months of this season, with a lot of high quality young talent which will eventually find itself sent down the (ex)G14 pipeline. And even with all this talent placing Udinese in 6th place with a realistic chance at Champions League football, Simone still wants to avoid the drop. Like, the relegation drop.

I think we may be able to chalk it up to spending last year on loan to Cagliari, and thinking anytime he ventures down south it’ll be to fight relegation. But other than that, it’s quite clear Simone doesn’t have the high hopes and self-esteem everyone else in Udine seems to have despite, you know, being all but bound for Europe next year.

“Reggina have the same objective that we have had since the start of the season – survival.”

“Even though we are in a prestigious position at the moment we need to go out on the pitch looking to secure our Serie A status.”

I’m not sure about the motivational tactics of this either. On one hand it’s refreshing to see an athlete show such humility; on the other, can’t imagine insinuating to your teammates “hey, we suck a lot more than we think we do” is a morale booster of sorts. Maybe a win this weekend will turn that frown upside down.

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Category: Serie A