Bologna Club Focus: A Veltri of Dorian Gray

Date: 15th April 2014 at 8:41pm
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In the pre-season months, clubs put together their squads carefully; an addition here, another there, trying to ensure they’re the perfect balance for the first game of the season. Of course, they’re not. They need to hang in a few galleries around the country before they find how they look best.

There is, one has to assume, such a sentiment about Bologna, buried somewhere in Albano Guaraldi – a perfect vision of the team, locked in a mental attic while the reality has flailed about in debauchery since the embers of summer.

It is only in the last couple of weeks that we have had a glimpse into the attic, at the painting therein and been able to appreciate all that they are, as they have looked uninspired, drab and doomed in almost equal measures up to now.

The Reggio-Emilia Derby with Parma is not one of Italy’s society events, nor one of its most storied – Sunday’s game marked only a 30th meeting of the sides, and they went into it married on nine wins apiece. Of course, the Ducali have been enjoying a season for the ages until recent weeks and it was more in the spirit of their recent stumble that they started Palm Sunday’s lunchtime game.

Meanwhile, Bologna began with Panagiotis Kone looking rampant and Lazaros offering the same drive and creativity that has become his stock in trade in recent weeks. When Nicola Cherubin scored just before half-time it was neither a surprise nor undeserved; proving what we knew all along – Bologna are a collection of decent players who have made a poor team.

It might have taken them until they were staring into the abyss before they realised that but, whether they’re playing for a Serie A contract with someone else next season, or if they were just idling before because there was no clear target, the Rossoblu have looked a lot more of a team in the last two weeks than in the ten or so preceding them.

And yet.

Despite giving Inter a real scare, mental lapses allowed the Nerazzurri to score twice and Bologna earned a single point. Despite giving Parma a real scare, a mental lapse allowed the Ducali to equalise late on and Bologna earned a single point. There is a pattern emerging that is only encouraging so long as the teams below don’t actually win a game.

Davide Ballardini, after fourteen games in charge, has got his players – one assumes – doing what he wants them to do, and perhaps more. Finally, the mental picture of Bologna may be fading in favour of their true selves.

The players in wide areas on Sunday were particularly impressive; Amadeo Morleo and Gyorgy Garics enjoying positive spells at various stages of the game, both surging forward and interchanging with one of the Greeks, even if to little concrete reward.

There was a familiar problem, though. Jonathan Cristaldo, playing as a lone striker, was almost entirely anonymous. His replacement, Robert Acquafresca, was a little better, forcing a decent save from Mirante late on that would have sealed the game as Bologna pressed for a second goal. Rolando Bianchi only came into shot a little after that effort, looking like a Trojan on a cigarette break as he rested on the side of the dugout bathed in the early summer sun. Goals are not forthcoming from the forward line.

In fact, Cristaldo’s main action was to participate in one of the more preposterous of goal-line scrambles as somehow he, Friberg and Kone contrived to fail to put the ball into the net despite a multitude of simple opportunities to do so. In a season of head-scratching attacking, that one brought hair out in clumps.

It was down to Cherubin to bring up the Rossoblu’s 3000th Serie A goal – it’s a big figure, for sure, but equates to a little over 44 goals per season; that said, it would take another 17 goals in their last 5 games to match that tally – I would suggest that is unlikely. There is hope on that front, but Alberto Gilardino will not arrive until the summer, Guaraldi having confirmed that the deal is almost certainly complete.

So it trundles on. A Bologna showing signs of life; not quite good enough to win a game, but not bad enough at the moment to drop into the relegation zone – almost the picture perfect definition of a sitting duck. They’ve been a hard team to love this season, seemingly doing everything possible to spite everyone and everything but now we’re coming to the end of the romance, the Rossoblu have started to make the best of themselves.

By the time Dorian Gray realised he was lost, it was too late – he paid the price of his decadence with his life. Bologna may just about escape from the attic intact; so it can all begin again.

 

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