Google Finance and the Italian Market

As indicated by the official Google blog, Google launched this week Google Finance.
I am pretty impressed by the fact that Google was able to use information about companies listed at the Milan Stock Exchange, with plenty of data about them.
This is not so strange since few weeks ago, Google became the official search engine inside Fineco, which is the leading online banking service in Italy.

However, the US version is much more complete with several financial data and graphs, we do not find on the Italian counterpart. Moreover, it is not possible to use the "add portfolio" functionality, since they are not supporting at the moment international stocks.
Hopefully, they will complete the International version soon, even though it is reasonable that we need to wait for 2-3 months.

New Interview for Maradona jr.

I have just heard about a new interview that Diego Armando Maradona jr. has released to the Italian press. As he always said, Diego jr. wants to play for Naples. "My dream is still to wear the Napoli's jersey. However, I don't want to get the number 10, because I am a different person compared to my father. I want to say something about the Maradona 'character'. In football field, he has been great, but outside the pitch he has always been influenced by other guys. By the way, this is something that happens to all drug addicts."

Unfortunately Diego Maradona jr. (see picture taken from the Napoli.com website) haven't play recently, as far as I can see in the Internapoli calcio website. Hopefully, he will come back to the pitch soon.

Joel Retornaz and curling (Forza Joel!)

In the last few days, I have read a great article on the Washington Post about Curling.
Funny enough, my country, Italy, discovered a new discipline with the Winter Olympics. During the competition, Raidue, the Italian TV, usually shows the Italian curling team once a day.
Three weeks ago, nobody could have forecasted this!

Thanks to the Italian most famous curler, Joel Retornaz (by the way, he was indeed born in Switzerland), who has been defined by the WP "a celebrity built in less than a week", almost 5 million people watched the winning game with Canada.
Before the event, there was less than 500 people playing curling in Italy....
By the way, Italy had never before qualified for an Olympic curling tournament; we were at Torino only because Italy was the host country.

Maradona jr is playing for Internapoli

I did not update my blog for a while.

But now, I have great news.
Diego Armando Maradona jr has finally decided: he will play for the Internapoli. Internapoli plays in the 6th Italian division (so called Excellence division). In a recent interview (Kiss Kiss radio Naples), Diego junior said that he wants to demonstrate to perform well in his city. He also mentioned that he loves Naples and Naples soccer team. In the near future he hopes of being able to play in the blue jersey (i.e. for Napoli calcio). He has started training with Internapoli since the beginning of 2006, and he believes he has made the right choice for his soccer career.

Indeed, as mentioned by Carlo Nesti, a famous italian journalist, he has turned down several offers from better teams (for instance, Acireale, in C1 Serie, third division, Lecco, in C2 Serie, fourth division, Angri, in D serie, fifth division.

For a complete background story of Maradona jr, I would recommend you to take a look at Wikipedia.

Totti and the Soccer World Cup

Everybody here in Italy is really upset about the serious injury that could block Francesco Totti, the Italian Soccer star, playing for Italy at the 2006 Soccer World Cup.
The Roma playmaker got a tackle from behind by Richard Vanigli and twisted his ankle during a game with Empoli.

Initial assessments said the player would not see action again for two or three months.
I am positive that our capitan will recover from that injury and he will be ready for the game, but I am really questioning why Italian referees do not punish with harsh punishements (i.e. red cards) these kind of behaviours.

Maradona jr and Campeoni, Campioni

No surprise: finally Mr. Diego Armando Maradona Jr. has been transferred from Genoa CFC to Cervia. He is going to play for the Reality show Campeoni....

Diego Armando Maradona Jr was born in Naples, September the 20th 1986. He plays as a midfield. Hw used to play for Naples, in different Youth teams. He moves to Genoa in August 2004, where he was with the "Primavera" team.
On Monday 10th, he will be presented at the Italia 1 Show.

Surely he will make the difference in the competition, but the real question is whether Diego is able to survive to the pression....
PS: his fans club is at Diego Maradona jr. fc.

Lost in translation

I am just wondering whether Mr. Blatter is planning to introduce new technology into the International soccer. What he said was not clear to everybody. Mr Ian Christon, Football League representative, said at BBC "His comments were misrepresented". Did he say it because of this image? A second question is: should the Fantasy soccer players be rewarded for this "missing goal"?

Let's give the Inter jersey to this guy

Somebody has posted this funny story about the funniest Campioni player, Mr. Gullo. He or she want him playing with Inter at the end of the season. Would that guy have played with Basel, it could have made sense...

Gullo

Litmanen and his fax

Italian sport press has declared that in January 2005, Livorno football club can enroll the Finnish soccer star Jari Litmanen, 33 years old.

Litmanen played with Ajax Amsterdam, Barcelona, Liverpool and now is playing with Helsinki. Gazzetta claims that Jari has sent to Livorno a fax with his money requests. The team reached the Serie A for the first time since the 60's, has limited budget but is eager to hire this soccer phenomenon. I am sure that Livorno fans will be delighted to see Jari in January. Hopefully he is not injured, as it could be. Mister Yahoo is also waiting for you, Jari....

Campioni, il sogno (Champions, the dream)

I am watching a new reality show about Soccer. Ciccio Graziani (World Cup winner in 1982) is the coach.

It is a great game. I am amazed to notice that many Campioni players have their own fans club.

The most popular players are Giuffrida (92 enrollments, with also a second fans club (31) and a third fans club (5)), Alfieri (159) and Francesco Gullo (110), who pretended to have played with FC Basel in Switzerland and in Champions League in 2002 (a funny website explaining what was going on is Francesco Gullo at Basilea, Basel FC!!!), Apicerni (117 enrollments) and Maradona jr.

Other players are: D'Innocenzo, the goalie (76), Emanuele Morelli (58), Claudio Moschino, the most talented player at Campioni (34), Fabio Borriello (108) who has a brother playing in Serie A, Spagnoli (53), who is credited to be one of the three winners, Christian Arrieta (55), a newcomer who arrived to improve the quality of the defence team and is pretty popular (see also Christian's new website, Fabio Maffini (82), Matteo Domeniconi (21), Ciro Olivieri (80), who is now injuried and not available anymore until the end of the soccer season, Gualtieri, the "Cobra" (29), Zoran Ljubisic (5) and Marco Pepe (10). Two Brasilians are also in the team: Mario Bordignon, (3) who already played in the third division in Portugal and the ever-injured Jefferson (5).

I am just wondering why Matteo Bondi has no fans club. Do you have the answer?

Gmail

I finally got my Gmail address. I was waiting since April 2004. However, I am still wondering which address I should have.

My family name is already taken, my name is too short, life is hard.....

Serie A

Juve and A.S. Rome won today in the first round of the Italian soccer Championship (Serie A). Serie A is just started, that's not too bad and it was more or less clear.

What it was less clear is that now for the first time, RossoAlice is offering the Internet broadcast of 10 Italian matches per week for 4euro/month. It is amazing how low is the price for a great service.

My second blogger

I have just created a second blog, a sort of Italian Tennis blog, mainly focused on the Italian talents Potito Starace and his friends and competitors.
If you have any question, check the FAQ.

Oliver, Rino, Potito and his backhand

During his career, Rino Tommasi, the most influencial Italian sport journalist, has proved many times to be right.

Yesterday he said in his site: “for sure, Starace has to improve his backhand, if he wants to reach a significant improvement (in the ATP ranking). Playing with competitors who are able to attack him in that side, he would have huge problems.” I am not sure that Olivier Rochus had had the chance of reading this quote before his game with Potito. However, he implicitly applied this technique all over the 5 sets with Mr. Starace yesterday at the Court 10 of the US open. I am just wondering what Mr. Tommasi is going to comment about that match.

To be honest, the Italian press suggested other reasons for the defeat with Olivier Rochus (6-1, 4-6, 4-6, 6-0, 6-3): Potito's low experience on the 5-set games (by the way, Olivier has got the same experience, as pointed out by the Belgian press), as well as his dwindling mental concentration has created a competitive advantage for the Belgian player. In 2000, Rochus, the shorter player in the ATP tour (165 cm) was able to beat, along with his brother Christophe, the Italian team in a historical match during the Davis Cup.
Looking at the game statistics, I have also noticed that Starace was really irregular during the game and he made 36 unforced errors (111% more than his competitor Rochus, and 123% more than he did in the first round with Popp).

Next week, the Organizers of the Genoa challenger ($25k, Clay) are planning to give to Potito a Wild Card for playing there. I wish however that Potito can spend more time in the US, playing fewer Tournaments, but with higher price money and prestige. The ability to reach the top 50 in the next 30 weeks and to stop playing Qualifications at the Grand Slam tournaments is crucially more dependent on his planning than on the progress on his backhand play.

Potito at the Grand Slam in 2004

While Potito is struggling in the 5th set with Rochus, I am publishing a visual analysis of what he did in the Grand Slam Tournament in 2004:

New Potito website

By Googling, I have just noticed that the number of fans of Mr. Potito Starace, the new Italian tennis sensation, has increased in the last few months. After the official website, a new site has been built up from somebody in the San Marino Republic.

So, the real question is: how many?

Potito won the first round at the US Open

I was in Turin in the last few days, so that I haven't had the opportunity to update my blog.


However, I had the opportunity to see Mr. Starace playing with Alexander Popp in the first round at the US Open (thanks to Eurosport). He did well: after 30 minutes of troubles where he lost 1-6 the first set, Potito won 6-3 6-4 6-3. If he plays in a similar way, he could win with Oliver Rochus. The belgian player reached in the second round, after the match with the young Croatian Mario Ancic, who was in the semifinal at Wimbledon.

Volandri, Italian n°1, and Seppi (with Shuettler Silver Medalist at the Olympics Games in Athens, see the blog of the match) also reached the second round.

The last Medals

Stefano Baldini got the Gold Medal at the Marathon but it is very sad that an unidentified man ran onto the race course about 5km short of the finish line and pushed the previous leader, Vanderlei de Lima, into the roadside crowd. "If that spectator didn't jump in front of me in the middle of the race, who knows what would have happened? Maybe I would have won. It disturbed me a lot," De Lima told reporters. To be honest, before the aggression, he was ahead 28 seconds at the 35th km, and he was losing 7 seconds per Km....

It is very sad that the Olympics Games are already over. I wish that in Beijin 2008 the OG will last for 2 or 3 months.

Sport comparison

I made a quick comparison of three of the most popular sports in the world, Basketball (blue), Soccer (green) and Baseball (yellow).

As a tool, I used BlogPulse which compares 3 keywords across all blogs. The result is stunning: Soccer got more hits than Basketball and Baseball. Strange, isn't it?

Wonderful Advertising

I just inserted a quick and dirty adv which is scanning my postings and determining its topic. Google AdSense™ delivers ads targeted to my smirky's content pages. Funny enough: as a title I put "Wonderful Italy". The adv was: "Green card lottery" and Immigration to the US".

Thank you Google ad....