A tale of cigarettes, grappa, time travel and hopefully goals
Season 6 – 2002/03
As we roll on into Season 6, Dario Snr’s transfer marker wheeling and dealings are limited. A young German striker, descended from a famous diving forward and an Italian schoolboy with a little ponytail join Juventus. Fowler and Peruzzi leave due to their limited game time. Apart from the fact that Dario Jnr has called in sick the Juventus squad is looking strong.
A tale of cigarettes, grappa, time travel and hopefully goals
Season 5 – 2001/02
Last season ended trophy-less for Juve and Dario, despite a strong individual display by the little Bisonte, scoring 31 goals. After four seasons he is five goals away from becoming a centurion.
Clearly, Dario was busy during the summer months as he still has some grappa and cigarettes left by mid-August. With this in mind, he decides to take another month off, to work through the back log.
A tale of cigarettes, grappa, time travel and hopefully goals
Season 4 – 2000/01
The new season begins a little bit backwards, as we cover Mini Dazza’s involvement in the Euros. He is called up to the squad a gets his first cap in a 2-0 friendly victory over Denmark. A few days later he makes another friendly appearance, bagging a brace against Saudi Arabia. Big Dazza tells little Dazza the Saudis won’t always be push over, there is some big money investment coming their way in the future.
A tale of cigarettes, grappa, time travel and hopefully goals
Season 3 – 1998/99
Dario Jnr and Dario Snr have agreed that, based on the fact no other clubs made an approach for the little Bisonte’s services, he will stay at Venezia for the time being. Unfortunately, Venezia’s managerial team have run the club into the ground and therefore can only afford to recruit from the free transfer market. Gio Stroppa has a few Italian caps to his name, but the rest are all young lads, with hopefully a bit of potential.
Venezia draw Swiss side FC Sion in the UEFA Cup first round and the season gets off to a fine start for Dario and chums.
A tale of cigarettes, grappa, time travel and hopefully goals
Season 2 – 1998/99
We finished season one with Dario Jnr having helped Venezia secure promotion to the top flight of Italian football, meaning the little Bisonte will be playing in Serie A 13 years earlier than D Snr, or depending on how you try and explain time travel, a season later. I can’t figure out if we are ahead of schedule or behind. Does the future that the Old Tatanka lived even exist anymore? Let’s not worry about it.
Venezia made a fair bit of money last year selling players and they know they will need to strengthen their squad if they are to compete. Fortunately, there are some quality bargains in the transfer market.
A tale of cigarettes, grappa, time travel and hopefully goals
Season 1 – 1997/98
The idea behind this save is a simple one, Dario Hubner has travelled back in time to see if his professional career would have been different if he had been, well, a bit more professional. The man lovingly nicknamed Tatanka or Bisonte didn’t sign a professional contact until he was 22 years old, and he didn’t play in Serie A until he was 30.
What he did manage, in the 2001/02 season, despite his fondness for smoking cigarettes and drinking grappa, was to become, at the age of 35, the joint top scorer in Serie A, scoring 24 goals for Piacenza. He missed out on the opportunity to play for Italy in the 2002 World Cup, despite the Italian public being keen to see him in an Azzurri shirt, Trapattoni didn’t select him. He also went on a tour of the USA in the summer of 2002 with Milan, however Ancelotti was put off by his smoking. Who would have thought?
As I understand it Dario is quite happy with his career and doesn’t regret anything. Fortunately for CM9798 blog readers I’m not of the same option, after all I’ve witnessed him score 16 goals in 9 games for Real Madrid as part of a side of uncapped superstars.
We join the story at the start of the 1997/98 season, Dario Snr has travelled back in time (it’s not really important how this was possible) and convinced 16 year old Dario Jnr to travel to Venice in the year 1997 to begin his career a new, at Venezia. Why Venezia, why not? After all they have a pretty groovy orange and green home kit in the game.
Continue readingIts Friday! Rob’s experiment reaches the end of the first season
We begin the final part of this epic trilogy with a tale of retribution, at the beginning of this adventure we travelled to Valencia and were beaten 5-1 in the most even of games. It is fair to say that thanks to Lards and Mori, Spain’s perpetual substitutes we atone for that most unfair result.
Bonjour! French Friday is not a thing, especially as Rob is in Spain with the UnCapticos. It’s a superb concept but are the results equally as good?
We return to the Bernabeu for the second instalment of Lorenzo Sanz’s experiment. The basic gist being, if you want to play for Real Madrid you can’t play for your country. At the end of part one we lost D Hubbs, after scoring 16 goals in 9 games, he decided to captain Italy to a 5-2 defeat. Japhet N’D is so upset at the loss of the Bison he goes out on a massive bender in Madrid and tares a calf muscle while dancing on a table. He is out for three months, not helpful Japhet, not helpful at all, his 9 goal and 9 assists in 13 games will be missed.
Another bit of bad news, Iuliano and Di Biagio get called up to the Italy squad for the World Cup qualifying playoff match so we will have a nervous wait to see if we will be saying goodbye to another two players. We put that out of our minds for now, it’s a Champions League night and Partizan Belgrade are in town. The match doesn’t pose too many problems and despite D Hubbs departure we continue to fire in the goals, although Partizan are probably not the most challenging of opponents.
Well what do we have here. Rob’s back! Remember Rob? What’s he up to?
July 1st 1997, Real Madrid have won La Liga with a side full of international talent, however it hasn’t all been plain sailing. Manager Fabio Capello and Club President Lorenzo Sanz had multiple fallings out during the season and Cappello has left after just a year in charge. Lorenzo has decided enough is enough, Los Blancos need to change direction. The Galacticos are becoming the Un-capt-icos, but what does mean? Lorenzo tells the other board members.
They can’t play here if they have played or go on to play for their country. No exceptions. If they have a cap we can’t sign them and if they get a cap they’re gone.
There are murmurs of disbelief in the board room, some even go so far as to say this idea will never work, these players are bound to get called up to play for their country and what then? Simple says Lorenzo, we sell those putas and buy more f**king players this Real “bloody” Madrid who wouldn’t want to come here!
With that the matter is closed, well for a season at least, or maybe less. Lorenzo appoints an unknown manager of unknown origins who spends the summer trawling through his excel spread sheet assembling a squad of players who fulfil this one golden rule and to be fair to Mr Nobody he doesn’t do a bad job, because, thanks to limited researching and/or time the CM9798 database contains some absolute gems who don’t seem to have ever played for their country.
The Un-capt-icos are born.
**Full disclaimer, Canizares does have some caps, Mr Nobody messed up before he even began, but don’t worry he never gets a game and is heading straight to the B Squad**
Continue readingGood day to you. It’s been a wild 15 weeks as Rob has taken us around the world with Sao Paulo. All good things come to an end though so please enjoy the final days of Rob in Brazil…
Welcome to the final installment of what has been, in my opinion, quite an entertaining adventure. The goal this season was the treble, League, FA Cup and Champions League and we are still in with a chance of achieving said goal. The action starts straight away with our Champions League Quarter final, as you can see we face Juventus.
