Preview: Successful Italian footballers playing outside of Italy...not many are able to replicate the form they had when playing in their domestic league of the Serie A. Gianfranco Zola is probably one famous example during his playing days at Chelsea. The former Parma striker was even voted to be the best footballer to have ever wore the Chelsea jersey. So, in what was seen as a task to get back on track (and playing Champions League football again next season), Bayern Munich made a lot of noises in the German football transfer market ahead of the current season with especially Franck Ribery (Marseille), Miroslav Klose (Werder Bremen) and whom will be the subject of focus today - Luca Toni (Fiorentina). In my continuing weekend unofficial football focus series's Euro 2008 special on whom to look out for in the tournament, it will be the Italian whom has won over the hearts of the fans (and the girls). Maybe it does help that his girlfriend is pretty too...
I think it's karma. It used to be that I had never forgiven Italy for beating Germany in the World Cup semi-finals two years ago at all. It took a long, long time before the hatred is reduced to a minimum. Then we got an Italian who is now the manager of the England national team (Fabio Capello). It has always been the English media being critical for Italy's infamous defensive style of play and now it's an Italian bossing their national team.
If you told me an Italian is going to play in Germany's top flight, I would had almost thrown a hissy fit. An Italian playing in Germany?! I will never, ever forgive Italy for beating my other national team Germany out of the World Cup. That would had been me after the semi-finals. But, a year had passed by. Let bygones be bygones. So when I read that Luca Toni is coming over to Bayern Munich before the start of the new season, it got me intrigued.
Only much later I found out that Toni is only the second Italian to play in the Bundesliga. But the man from Modena who had only been in the so-called unfashionable clubs like Fiorentina, Palermo and in the lower divisions in Italian football before only making his mark very much later in his career (and even part of the World Cup-winning squad), Bayern's investments had paid off somewhat. The Italian international had been scoring goals like crazy and is currently at the top of the Bundesliga goalscoring chart in just his first season. Trying to stop the late bloomer into top-flight football is a tall order. Though the Italian's original name is Luca Toni Varchetta Delle Cave (yeah, I'm not joking...I found it here), the fact that he's handsome as well also endear him to the female fans. Fans would turn up at the training sessions just to see him in action. But sorry ladies, he does have a girlfriend already in the form of Italian model Marta Cecchetto. What was interesting is that when she first met him (he was doing his military service), she didn't knew he was a footballer.
With Luca Toni doing so well in Germany, there has been questions why he went to Germany's most biggest football club and not elsewhere in his native Italy like Juventus or AC Milan (where he has been linked before). That actually got the Italian reporters intrigued. His explanation - "I told them that when Rummenigge and Beckenbauer ask you to play for their club, you go". He did, and initially in the early days of the current Bundesliga season, goalkeeper Oliver Kahn had criticised Toni and Franck Ribery in a thinly-veiled attack on their consistency. Almost late last month, Toni replied that Kahn wasn't wrong about it and was making sense. Winning matches is the culture at Bayern and losing is a disaster.
It has been only recently German football fans got to know more about him and what he does off the pitch and what he hopes to see in the future at his current club (another of his compatriot at the club so that he does not always feel homesick). Everything may be going fine with him and his girlfriend in Munich (they live in the city centre) and as he used to say, Italians are very attached to their country and he's still learning German (but he did revealed that he had been getting German lessons with his fellow Bayern team-mates Franck Ribéry and Sosa (who is from Argentina)...which did not always make much progress as he even admitted). Language wise...even if it may not be making much progress, his interviews in the German media are all being translated from Italian anyway. Juergen Klinsmann is going to be the new Bayern coach come this July and the former Germany coach do know Italian (from his former playing days at Inter Milan) and should be alright if Toni reverts back to his native language when speaking to his new boss.
But as Reuters Soccer Blog had explained that if there is only one German word to learn (given the German language had always being infamously known one of the toughest out there for thos who are so used to English but hey...English is actually also part of the Germanic language family!), 'Tor' would be it. Goal in German (Bayern coach Ottmar Hitzfeld revealed after a match that during half-time when asking Toni if he wants to take a break, he kept saying 'Tor').
Psst...back then in my most eagerness trying to learn the German fussball terms and its English equivalents since I began following the Bundesliga after the World Cup, 'Tor' often appeared and so it was naturally being registered (and I used to say it out loud without knowing...one sign to know that German football had really entered into my life). One of the first few fussball terms I had learned. Reuters Soccer Blog's recommendation is a good one (and so when that entry appeared, it brought back those times of learning the terms and trying to pronounce them and me almost smiling as a result). As what Luca Toni had said after Bayern won the DFB-Pokal (where he and Ribery spoke German on TV for the first time since their arrival), langsam! Slowly, that is.
Who knows in the future (given Toni developed late as a striker), fluent in German as well. Just ask the now Ireland manager Giovanni Trappatoni during his sint in the Bundesliga where in his first stint, it was not perfect but later on, he's able to manage it and was last coaching at Austria's Red Bull Slazburg (and Austrians do speak German as well, though the variants may be different somehow from their bigger neighbour). What I find interesting is that when I once read the squad list for the Azzuri for their recent international matches out of curiosity, I saw that in Italian, Toni's current club is being translated as...Bayern Monaco. Yes. Monaco is Munich in Italian. No, it's not referring to the principality. Ah, it's so true of whatever being said about football being an international sport in the beginning.
Signor Luca Toni is a good example that even though you may be a late bloomer in the crazy world of football, you are still able to succeed if you work hard and believe in yourself. Whether he may be in the starting line-up for Italy's squad come this summer of European Championship, what is for certain is that 'Il Bomber' (the Italian press's name for Toni, in tribute to Bayern and Germany's greatest striker of all time, Gerd Muller who was nicknamed 'Der Bomber') has finally arrived on the world stage. His idol Roberto Baggio whom he used to play alongside with, will be proud.
With Italy actually being one of the Germans' most favourite holiday destinations...ah, all the more to like Luca Toni. No wonder they love him, especially at Bayern Munich. The rest of us who are fans of the Bundesliga? Being jealous can be a little dangerous...just be thankful he's in Germany and not in the usual places of Spain or (cough cough) England or one of Italy's biggest football clubs. Who says Germany cannot get the footballers they want? They even managed to get Franck Ribery where Arsenal was also seriously in the frame at one time (mainly because of the club's French connections in the form of manager Arsene Wenger). The Teutonic nation has also done it before in the past (read: Kevin Keegan to Hamburg and was also a darling in Germany, especially at Hamburg). Though Bayern may be the one who has the money to spare the most in Germany at the moment, that is.
