If this doesn't happen by this evening It will be almost impossible to pull off.
Matteo Darmian | LVG confirms he's on his way here for a medical
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Pelle is the closest thing to a successful Italian player in England since 2002 and he has only spent 1 season here, could very well be another Michu.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...r-feature-Premier-League-Ambrosetti-Zola.html
Why?
We are the front runners and we have agreed personal terms, just like Rojo and Blind last summer we can decide to stall until August if we very well please.
The assumption is that we won't close any deal while on tour. IMO it's not the case. I don't think Darmian will be going with us on tour from day one anyway, he needs to move from Turin to Manchester which will take time and it's not a move he can complete in 24 hours.
He'll just be put up in the Lowry until he sorts a place out, like we did last summer with a few players.
I think we're reaching a conclusion in that making determinations on players based on their national side exploits is generally pointless. People can't even agree on good, fair comparisons.
How many good, high profile Italians have joined lately? None. Balotelli and Osvaldo are exceptions, as they are idiots who have wasted their careers with their attitude and behaviour. No decent Italian club is interested in them for good reason.
Darmian has everything to succeed and will likely be at least a very solid squad member.
Some muppets need to up their game. Pfft the whole Torinos manager confirmed it is soooooo last night! Come om lads, stick with the program 
There's no doubting his ability. He was in the fecking team of the season in Serie A, in the most tactically oriented league in the world, playing for a mid-table team at the age of 24.
Well Balotelli and Osvaldo thats 2, the rest like Bianchi,Aquilani,Di Michele,Diamanti,Dossena,Giacherrini,Santon(especially)etc, were all signed in somewhat similar circumstances as Darmian...and they failed to deliver.
Im definitely not saying Darmian is going to be a flop ....far from it, i have praised him on here (previous pages), but I'm certainly not going to say Italians generally do well in England when you will struggle to name 10 successful Italians in the last 20 years and most of them were already established players before moving here,plus they all signed in the 90s.
Its one thing to be optimistic about Darmian(as we all are), its another to skew facts to fuel that optimism.
Di Canio, Zola, Baiano, Balotelli (City), Carbone, Cudicini, Di Matteo, Vialli, Eranio, Festa, Lombardo, Ravanelli, Pelle, Pistone, Maccarone even Roberto Mancini..
There's a success for very failure tbf... that's quite a list actually now i look at it
FIFA Rankings can be as easily fudged as FIFA itself. You can play a lot of lesser teams, get lots of victories and be high on ranking. You can't be seriously suggesting that the England midfield is better than Spain's.
I've seen loads of Chelsea fans complain about Ivanovic last season, saying his goals masked a lot of his general weaknesses defensively and always being caught out of position. Opposing fans rate him a lot higher then Chelsea fans do just because he scores goals basically.
I asked for high profile, and you give me a list of shit and call them established. Only Aquilani was rated and went for more than 10m on that list, and he was constantly injured. Mediocre players will be mediocre regardless of the country they play in.
Not a single name on that list has had an impressive career for club or country. Only Balotelli has been a NT regular at one point.
They've hardly sent the pick of the litter over though have they. Do you really believe if someone like Pirlo or Zambrotta had moved here they wouldn't have been roaring successes?
*note to self, never attempt sarcasm on a forum*
I won't claim that I know more than Chelsea fans for their players, but Ivanovic always looked to me rock solid. In fact, the only thing I don't like at him is that bar goals from set pieces, he isn't that good attacking wise. But defensively, I always rated him.
Compared to most of the big European footballing nationalities, Italians have on average done rather badly.
But why anyone should worry about that is beyond me. On its individual merits, this looks like an excellent and very sensible signing.
Italians actually do terrible in England and as far as I'm aware he doesn't speak English at all.
Italians do bad here because most of the Italians who came here were wrong choices anyway. The "bigger" names did the job.
How come it hasnt been announced already?
No, i gave you a list of ITALIAN players who before their moves to Europe were performing at a similar or slightly lower level than Darmian in the last decade or so, and most of them ended up flopping which was my original point, regarding the good Italian players - only about 3 or 4 were considerably better than Darmian before their high profiled moves and 3 of them flopped (the jury is still out on Pelle),Rossi flopped in England and ended up becoming a decent player at Villareal which suggests that a good player can flop in England and actually go somewhere else and do well.
EPL teams have signed great Italian players since the 90s and most of them were great before they came here, Darmian is not yet on that level so it'll be kind of fruitless to compare him to those players, which is why i was comparing him to the players who hadn't peaked before they got here.
Regarding your point about earning caps for the NT, Aquilani has almost thrice as many caps as Darmian for Italy, Giacherrini has 21 caps, Dossena 10 etc Pitiful? yes, but its not like i named players who weren't good at some point in their careers which earned them moves to England.
*Only comparing to Darmian because he is the standard I'm using, in no way,shape or form suggesting he will end up like these players.
NO, Italy is a great nation, with great players, i was simply highlighting the fact that Italians haven't done well in England in the 00s and 10s, granted most of the players haven't been world beaters, it is still a legitimate observation as there have been a lot of Italian players similar or on a slightly lower level than Darmian.
Aquilani was perma-injured, Giacherrini and Dossena were average even in Italy. I don't think that Rossi was a flop, more like a 18-20 years old player. It doesn't mean anything.
Probably will be after the medical tomorrow.
We don't anounce transfers anymore. Completed transfers are for lesser clubs like Liverpool. For a club of our stature it's enough to have players who are "close to signing" or "reportred to have agreed terms" etc.
Spoken like an avid watcher of Italian Football.
As a matter of fact, I watch Serie A.
Some weird equivalent would be if the likes of Townsend or Young go into an another league and fail. It wouldn't be cause English footballers fail in that league, but because they weren't that good in the first place.
Good for you.
I was voicing my opinion based on an observation that italian players haven't dont well in the EPL in over a decade, now there have been obvious factors as to why i.e skillset/ability, injuries,wrong clubs/situations etc and i agree with most of them, but my overall point and response to a poster who said Italian players do well in England, was that it hasn't been the case for a while hence the "not really", Darmian might end up being successful in England (which we all want anyway) but its still too early too tell, seeing as most of the people judging his abilities on here are doing so through highlights,stats and other people's testimonies, and without any valid primary research, its really hard to predict how successful he'll end up being,if we compare him to the last decade of Italian exports - he won't be as successful as we'd like him to be,comparing him to the stars of the 90s however, and he might end up being the best Italian player to ever play in England.
The reason i didnt particularly compare him to the "World Beaters" of the 90s was that most of them were already very much established before they moved here.
Not transfer related but Duncan Castles is getting a roasting on twitter right now after tweeting 'Question Utd fans' How many of you think Darmian will be first choice right back in 2 years time?
Some of the abuse he is getting is brilliant.
Some of the abuse he is getting is brilliant.
That is a ridiculous statement. He left when he was 20 to get more playing time and no one who saw him play would consider him to be any sort of flop.
It isn't, and if you had finished the sentence, you would have seen the bit where i called him a "decent" player and a "good" player but his time in England was unsuccessful - hence the word "flop", he didnt get much playing time for United or Newcastle, 5 appearances and 11 appearances respectively but he had a decent season with Parma the very next year, so unless that 1 season made him better, his age wasnt his only problem.
And his being a regular in the Italian national team and voted best player in that team ahead of of some players with considerable reputations wouldn't lead you to think that he was "very much established"?
Compared to the likes of Zola,Ravanelli,Vialli etc....No, ousting Abate and being rewarded with a player of the year award for an outstanding year is good but he still isn't as established as those guys, i mean his resume is impressive when you "google" him, but thats all it is .... a google search, unless you want to tell me you were very much aware of Darmian (excluding the World Cup) pre-intial talks with United.
Story starting to go round and round
Amazing. He didn't get much playing time at United as an 18/19 year old striker playing behind van Nistelroy, Saha, Rooney and Ronaldo - clearly a flop - he scored 4 in the 12 appearances he got that season (5 in the league) and made one of the best goals I've seen for Giggs (pure Berbatov). Newcastle was another matter - but then again, as an unwanted 19 year old, there was not much he could do if they just didn't play him. The second half of that season he scored 9 in 19 in Serie A and pretty much single-handedly saved Parma from relegation. It's ok to admit that you never saw him play - because if you had to couldn't possibly be writing this sort of twaddle.
All we ever seem to do in this window is 'place bids' and 'agree terms'.
Like i said, he is a good player, but you can hardly call his time in England a successful one, and i have no interest in argument about a player i have already praised when he was just an example in another argument - read the whole thing, but i guess if you want to dwell, i cant stop you.
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