This is the new Nike ball that you will see being kicked around next season. It's called the Nike Total 90 Ascente and will also be used in the EPL and in Spain's La Liga. The ball will be used in all Serie A, Serie B, and Coppa Italia matches as well as the SuperCoppa this August and in all Primavera matches.

Yesterday the Lega Calcio announced the dates for the 2009/2010 Serie A season. Serie A begins the weekend of August 23rd and will end on May 16th to give the national team enough time to prepare for the World Cup. There will be 4 midweek rounds (September 23, October 28, January 6, and March 24).

Before we dive into Serie A transfer news, I just want to report on a transfer from Serie B that as fairly important, which was Torino's Alessandro Rosina signing for Zenit St. Petersburg. Nobody expected a player with Rosina's talent to stay in Serie B, but the move to Russia seemed a little surprising, however it makes sense.

On June 16th, Italy will play their first game of the UEFA U-21 Championship 2009 vs. Serbia. The Azzurrini find themselves in a group with Belarus, Serbia, and hosts Sweden. Italy have always been successful at this level however they have not won the U-21 Championship since 2004. Pierluigi Casiraghi has been unsuccessful with the Azzurrini so far since taking over from Claudio Gentile in 2006 and this is arguably his last chance.

Often we see a young player explode onto the calcio scene and everyone turns heads and says "Where did this kid come from?". Well, now is your chance to gain some knowledge about some promising Italian young players and maybe in a year or two when one of these players starts to do some good things on the pitch you'll know who they are.

Today the list of 35 players was announced that will play in a friendly on June 6th in Pisa vs. Northern Ireland and the upcoming FIFA Confederations Cup. 22 players were called up for the Northern Ireland game, while 13 will skip that match and go straight to South Africa. Lippi said in recent weeks that the roster for the Northern Ireland match would be mainly experimental and would give national team experience to the players that merited a call-up based on their play throughout the Serie A season.

Last week I posted the first edition of Transfer Tuesdays, where every week we round up what every Serie A club is doing on the transfer market. Today is the last day of June, which means tomorrow the transfer window is officially open and you'll see all the transfers made in the past few weeks become "official".

While Italian football provides excellent quality and entertainment on the pitch, we all know that it equally provides excellent quality and entertainment off the pitch. The crazy owners, the fights in the media between opposing managers and directors, the outbursts in press conferences, and all that other great stuff that keeps us entertained during the week.

Could the 35 year old Italian striker be headed to the Los Angeles retirement home club?
Courtesy of Goal.com:

A new adventure in the United States of America looks likely for 'Bobo'... Former Atalanta, Inter, Milan and Juventus striker Christian Vieri has flown out to Los Angeles to have a trial with the Galaxy, just days after walking out on the Bergamaschi.

(Inter-Atalanta 1-0. Muntari)
(1-1. Doni)
(2-1. Ibrahimovic)
(2-2. Guarente)
(2-3. Doni)
(3-3. Cambiasso)
(4-3. Ibrahimovic)

So when I was a little kid watching calcio back in the '90's, my idol was none other than Roberto Baggio. Everything about him amazed me: his technique and skill, his perfect free kicks, the way he just slipped past defenders like they were practice cones, the amazing goals he scored, everything.

Ever since 17 year old Manchester United striker Federico Macheda has scored those two goals in the last two league games, the Italian media has been publishing articles about how Italy doesn't put faith in young players. On the one hand, it is true, Italy is a traditional society and most managers have the traditional view that players have to mature first and if you play them regularly too early you will "burn" them.

Bobo Vieri quite sadly spent most of last year with a fork sticking out of his back. So after being quickly ushered out of Firenze, he was, of course, snapped up by another half-decent Serie A team. After two-thirds of a season of non-productivity, he and Atalanta parted ways. And now he's looking for a [.

Let me just start out by saying that I have never liked Goal.com (the English version at least. The Italian version is actually pretty good because it just posts articles from Italian newspapers, so at least you know you're reading from a source). The English version always seems to have stories without sources that look like they were just thought up at that instant and posted, and I have never liked their opinions on Italian calcio.

I'm prone to premonitions. I can visualize what Seinfeld rerun is going to be on next week before it's broadcast. I can see what kind of stupid things my mother will say over the holidays. I know what I know and when I know it -- which is sometimes before it happens.

Given that intro, I'm going to call it.

How great it was to have Serie A back after the winter break. I missed my weekly calcio fix. Roma-Milan highlighted the return of Serie A. Both teams desperate for the 3 points, as Roma wanted to inch closer to the top half of the table and Milan wanted to get closer to Juventus and Inter.

After a day full of tension, Berlusconi announced late today that Kaka will be staying at Milan and that he closed the deal himself. So Milan fans everywhere can now breathe a sigh of relief (unless you were in favor of him leaving). We'll see what happens over the next few days though. Regarding Serie A, we are now officially at the half-way point.

Funny sign caught in the stands this week. It says "To the Sheik, if you want Kaka now you'll have to eat prunes." I thought that was pretty clever and funny. The midweek round was supposed to be Milan and Juventus' chance to catch Inter as they had a difficult away tie in Catania.

Once again, the January transfer window (and the associated interacting between scouts, player agents, club investors, sporting directors and presidents) comes to an end, freezing the current European club rosters all the way until Summer and making us wonder who won the prize for "bargain buy" or "overpriced fatty" of the month.

According to Goal.com Vieri has had enough of limited playing time with Atalanta and is on his way to LA for a trial.

Bruce Arena denies the rumor.

What do you think? Is he too old? Can we afford him? Do we even want him?

Additional article here thanks Laurie.

World Soccer News
For week of 05/20
FIFA threatens to expel Bosnia and Poland from World Cup
The international football governing body has threatened Bosnia and Herzegovina and Poland with the expulsion from the current World Cup qualifiers because of their fans' ill conduct.

Shame no one was there to see it Fantastic strike by Zanetti (who is no relation to Javier of Internazionale), but no Juventus fans saw it live - their league game at home against Atalanta on Sunday was played in front...

I thought now that the season is over and we've moved into the craziness of the off season where transfer rumors are posted by the minute on every calcio website possible, I would start a new weekly post called "Transfer Tuesdays" where we can sift through all these rumors and see what all 20 Serie A teams are up to during this summer's calciomercato.

The new season is quickly approaching (many teams have started pre-season training) and I realized that I never put up a best goals post for last season. So I searched the internet for videos of that showed the "top 10 goals" but I realized that I didn't agree with any of the videos because I felt that so many good goals were being left out.

We are now at the third volume of Transfer Tuesdays, and now we dig further into the transfer market. Most teams have started training again, and the new season is quickly taking shape. Now with all teams in pre-season training the sporting directors are moving frantically to make deals so that new signings can start pre-season training with the team.

Today the schedule was released for the 2009/2010 season. Lega Calcio finally decided to do the schedule EPL-style, with no seeding for teams, which meant you could have big games on the first day of the season. The first day of the season which starts the weekend of August 22 and 23 has two very interesting encounters, with Genoa-Roma and Palermo-Napoli.

Well, it's that time of the summer again. I'm off to the old country tomorrow, so the blog will be inactive for a couple of weeks. However I will be back right before the start of the Serie A season so I'll be able to maybe get a mega-preview up like last season and we'll wrap up the important news that happened while I was gone.

The Weekend Round-up will be up tomorrow since today was the last day of the summer transfer market and teams made last minute deals. Many clubs were scrambling until the very last minute to get contracts deposited into the league offices and some transfers had to be canceled because they weren't completed in time.

After 3 giornate, only 3 clubs are still at full points: Sampdoria, who defeated Atalanta 1-0 in Bergamo with a goal from Daniele Mannini; Juventus, who saw Lazio off with a 2-0 win thanks to Martin Caceres and David Trezeguet; and Genoa, who thumped Napoli 4-1 with Sergio Floccari, Giandomenico Mesto, Hernan Crespo, and Houssine Kharja all scoring their first goals of the season.

And so, with Serie A starting up again this weekend, the second half of the season begins (although technically it begins January 25th when the girone di ritorno begins). I thought it would be a good idea to give each team a grade for their efforts so far. Serie A has been very interesting this season and has provided us with some top quality football to gaze our eyes upon.

FC Internazionale are certainly the worst losers in whole Italy. Many times throughout history we have seen things fall apart after only one failure. A barrage of criticism followed, the media question all accomplishments and the team is cracking under pressure. Just remember last year when few failures in Serie A and also the elimination [.

Former England captain David Beckham was once again the talk of the town in the Italian Serie A as he scored the first goal of his Milan career against Bologna just moments ago. Beckham, on loan to the Rossoneri in a bid to impress England's Italian manager Fabio Capello, arrived at the end of a Clarence Seedorf pass and struck beautifully into the top corner from the right side of the box.

Inter-Milan yesterday turned out to be one of the better derbies of recent years. It was filled with intensity, exciting play, and featured two star-studded squads. Adriano's goal was subject to much debate, but even a Milan fan like myself has to admit that it was a call that could have gone either way.

While we all know that our favorite calcio stars are all highly skilled athletes with unique, rare talent, we must also remember that they are also, you know, human. Are you shocked? Are you sitting at your computer with your mouth wide open thinking "Human? Really?" Well thankfully there is a video to prove it.

Pre register at the new big football site www.11×2.com today. Italian Serie A AC Milan vs Atalanta Bergamo LIVE  AC Milan vs Atalanta Bergamo  HIGHLIGHTS

At the winter break, most people had already hypothesized that Chievo would be returning to Serie B next year. But with the arrival of coach Domenico Di Carlo, the Flying Donkeys have played with a reborn spirit in this second half of the season, and have racked up 21 points since the winter break (only Inter, Juve, and Milan have earned more).

I'm sorry there was no Weekend Round-up this week, I was away for Memorial Day Weekend and then yesterday my internet was down, so I figured by now it's Wednesday and everyone knows the results of this past weekend. So I'll just post the goals of the week for everyone to admire. Goals after the jump.

The last day of the season was a Sunday of goodbyes. Goodbye Maldini (retirement), goodbye Nedved (retirement, but may come back with another team), goodbye Figo (retirement, desk job with Inter probably), goodbye Ancelotti (Chelsea), goodbye Mazzarri (has to look for a team), goodbye Zenga (all signs are pointing towards Lazio, but maybe taking a year off), goodbye Quagliarella (signed for Napoli), goodbye Torino, Lecce, and Reggina (Serie B), goodbye Milito and Thiago Motta (off to Inter), goodbye Serie A every weekend, and then the two almost goodbyes that will be followed all summer by the press are those of Ibrahimovic and Kaka (who if reports are right will be playing each other in La Liga next season).

So since this is the last time we'll be seeing Serie A goals until late August, this week I figured I'd show a video of all the goals of week 38. Since it was the last day and most teams were just playing for fun, there were many goals, and many nice ones to boot. There is also a video of all 25 of Zlatan Ibrahimovic's goals that won him the capocannoniere title this season.

So, three clubs have now officially ended their search for a new boss. Atalanta, Juventus, and surprisingly Palermo have all appointed new managers today. Atalanta and Juventus choosing a new manager was expected, but Palermo appointing someone new was very surprising, especially considering that Davide Ballardini hasn't even been fired yet.