Cassano Doesn’t Wanna Grow Up, Toys ‘R Us Kid

By: chris | December 3rd, 2007

The guy’s good. A phenomenal talent. He has been compared to Maradona, Ronaldinho, Baggio and Totti, among others. He also has the maturity of a 7 year old. Alright, maybe that’s a little unfair to 7 year olds. Antonio Cassano belongs in diapers. (And he knows it.) No matter how good he is, no matter how much better he is than everybody else, he always finds a way to either make more noise with on the field shenanigans or off the field idiocy (or being fat). In short, he just finds a way to @#$% it all up. This weekend against Reggina, we got a glimpse of vintage Antonio.

One of the hopes of this season, a loan year at Sampdoria, was that the smaller stature of the Blucerciati would enable him to recapture that aura and set him on the right track. After burning his bridges at Roma and Real, the overwhelming feel being that he was more successful as a “big fish in a small pond”. Well, that hasn’t worked out so well. It appears there isn’t a pond in the world big enough for Antonio. On Saturday he provided a sparkling performance, with an utterly superb assist (below) on the first and ultimately deciding goal, and in the middle got in an obscenity-laced shouting match with Renzo Ulivieri, Reggina’s coach. Only Antonio doesn’t think so.

“There was a penalty kick on me and he started shouting at me from the sidelines. He was sent off quite correctly,” insisted Cassano.

“He wanted me sent off as well? What for, I didn’t say anything!”

Well, somebody forgot to inform Antonio that there was a little invention a few decades ago called the television, and that they actually film this stuff to magically beam it to everybody else in the world. And while he may not think he did anything, millions of others clearly disagree, because they saw it on the MagicTV. (For your viewing pleasure, below is a video with Antonio enunciating the word va…ffan…cu…lo very slowly, just to make sure we saw him not say it very clearly.)

Now it appears as though this little tiff with Ulivieri, even though it never happened, might send him to the stands for a few games, via a suspension. Right when Sampdoria needs him the most. Vincenzo Montella, his old Giallorossi strike partner, is out for a few months (on Roma’s tab), and Antonio is desperately needed to replace him as Sampdoria fights for a place in Europe. Not exactly the best timing from Antonio.

All this comes a couple weeks after Antonio had to leave the pitch in the middle of a game due to injury. Only he didn’t tell anybody. He just walked into the tunnel and off into the locker room, not telling anybody where he was going or why he was going there (I just assumed he’d heard about the unlimited free breadsticks at the Olive Garden). You know, basically what a five year old would do. Hell, even a 7 year old knows how to do the universally understood finger roll for a sub. And he wouldn’t have even had to open up his mouth.

So there you have it. New Antonio, same as the old Antonio.

Va…ffan…cu…lo:

Assist, first goal: