IL DANIELISTA 16

By: Michele | March 23rd, 2009

For the 16th edition of Il Danielista a special look back over the highs and lows of everyone’s favourite defensive midfielder.

It’s easy to think that Danielino has been at the heart of AS Roma for the past 10 years but its a little over 6 years since Capitano Futuro made his first Serie A appearance for the team against Como on the 25th of January. He was given his chance by the treacherous ‘I will never go to Juve’ cabbage man’, Capello. It didn’t take him long to break into the starting line up and on the 10th of May he got his first start and his first goal against Torino. In the 2003/ 04 season Daniele played for ASR 17 times in Serie A and thanks to sharing the pitch with experienced players such as Emerson gained much as a footballer.

Fast forward to now and Daniele is just as important, if not more, to the team than Francesco Totti.
In fact if you head down to the Olimpico on a match day (a real match day…) it is impossible not to notice that although the Totti shirts and banners outnumber those of any other player, Daniele is catching up.

A born and bred Romanista, Daniele is a gift from God to the legions of red and yellow fans.
Totti’s reign is coming to an end but the the Eternal City can rest easy knowing that Daniele is there to carry the torch as soon as Francesco steps down.

Of course it hasn’t all been plain sailing for the Prince of Rome.

The infamous Mc Bride incident is well remembered (in the only WC 2006 game Italy conceded a goal from open play).

Daniele’s recent suspension for making comments about referees, inter and everything wrong with Italian football in general…

His odd penalty miss…

What DDR did…

…what he should have done

Euros…

and…

After the man u game Daniele described the penalty miss as the worst point of his career (even though he was forgiven immediately after by the fans who sang his praises after the game).

Of course the above is nothing compared to his fair play, loyalty, skill, heart, strength, passion, dominance, character… you get the idea.

Daniele is pretty much the perfect midfielder and although he is currently playing a more defensive role and acting as a wall in front of Doni, Philou and whoever is semi fit he does have an eye for the goal.
Daniele is particularly good at unleashing canon balls such as this one against Fiorentina…

…he’s good with his head too…

…plenty more where those came from…

All in all the future looks bright for Roma with Daniele in the team.
This is the sort of player who can lift the whole team up and drag them through rough patches as he proved in the past when Roma was Totti-less.

FORZA DANIELE
TORNA PRESTO

I cannot end this post without a mention of his unfortunate link with forza nuova.
The extent of Daniele’s affiliation with this bunch of idiots is unknown (to me) but one can only hope its superficial. I had at one point considered writing a full post on his right-wing connections but I decided it was not particularly relevant to football and did not belong on this blog. I can however let you no that I found no concrete evidence linking him to the movement (which is more then I can say about his Roman brother in arms…).