For fans of Torino in the past year or so, the opening of a transfer window has not been cause for the usual euphoria.
Followers of most clubs anticipate the window’s opening with wide-eyed excitement, scrambling to the sports pages of newspapers and typing the name of their club into internet search engines to try and track down the latest talent that is being bandied about with a switch to their club.
Not so in Turin.
The transfer window, while still enjoyable when promising players like Ciro Immobile, Omar El Kaddouri and Nicola Bellomo are walking through the front door of the Stadio Olimpico, is now a time of nervous tension.
Worrying glances are turned to the rumour mills with fans desperately hoping one name, unlikely as it may be, will not be heralded with a move away: Alessio Cerci.
Fans check their calendar and do so each day for the month, waiting for the time when the cleaners at Milan’s Ata Hotel are left to sweep up the mess from the carnage created and left over after Italy’s notorious transfer deadline day tradition has wreaked havoc within the building but ultimately signals an end to the madness.
Torino fans can continue to hope that when the curtain does come down on the winter mercato, their maverick winger and superstar talent Alessio Cerci remains a Torino player.
Certainly, he seems to want this to be the case having told local news after last weekend’s 0-0 draw at home to Fiorentina: “For January, I only want to stay at Torino then in June who knows what will happen.”
Common consensus in the Piedmont city according to sources that Torino Club Focus has on the ground there is that Cerci is very much happy playing the role of big fish in the small pond but that he is only willing to do so for another few months.
Reliable sources have admitted that Cerci is all but set to leave the club during the summer with the names of Roma (who he has hinted he would like to return to someday) and AC Milan being tossed around.
If the Italian international is to depart then, Granata fans deserve to enjoy the last few months of having him in their side as they put together a real assault on the Europa League positions.
What cannot be allowed to happen is for the club to cash in on their crown jewel during this window. Especially not to Juventus.
It hurt the club’s fanbase badly enough last summer when one of their own, Angelo Ogbonna, a fan who had risen all the way through the youth ranks to the first team and even captained the club on occasion crossed that divide.
The fact that he is struggling to settle across the city is no real crumb of comfort.
While Urbano Cairo and the board were only too happy to offload Ogbonna last year, they must be seriously commended for how they are handling the situation with the former Viola winger.
At times on this Club Focus, those in the halls of power at boardroom level have deservedly been criticised most notably for how they handled the departure of the iconic Rolando Bianchi as well as some other unsavoury behind-the-scenes details that took place surrounding the club’s relationship with the then captain.
A little more comforting was for the 26-year-old to reassure fans, just in case they were in any doubt, that “you can rest easy, Cerci is a Toro player.”
It is hard to say what makes you smile more, the fact that he is adamant he will remain in January (at least) or the fact that he discusses himself openly in the third person as all flamboyant geniuses tend to, i.e. the incomparable Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Ciaro and his cronies have got things badly wrong in the past but the fact that they are set to spurn an offer of up to €6 million plus the services of Ciro Immobile and Sebastian Giovinco from Juventus show not only how important a player he is to Torino but just how badly the club want to keep him and they do deserve great credit for that in an era when clubs all to readily part with their stars when the bigger boys come knocking.
“Alessio to Juventus is a hoax without any foundation because he will not be leaving us,” said Cairo. “The player has a contract with us until 2016.”
Cerci is such a rare commodity in the modern era. Agile, quick, explosive in ability and at times temperament but also a player guaranteed to have you on the edge of your seat with anticipation.
Everything you want from a modern day winger. Do not take that away from Toro but let us enjoy him while we have him. For the next five months at least.
