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).

Who will steal Cristiano Ronaldo's crown as Europe's top goal scorer?

Bryan Arguez. Giuseppe Nazzani. Vincenzo Bernardo. Am I the only one who doesn't think NCAA soccer is a step up from training with professionals and playing in Italian/German youth leagues? I can't help but wonder which one of these kids is going to elect to represent another country because of Rongen's latest snub.

Un guerriero svedese, che impressionava per forza fisica e per la grande grinta che metteva in ogni gara, è ora costretto a lottare contro un brutto male: la leucemia. Klas Ingesson, ex Bari, Bologna e Lecce (negli anni 1996-2001, ha impressionato nel campionato di calcio per la sua grande forza, da vero e proprio vichingo) si trova a dover affrontare la partita più importante.

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.

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.

I'm going to break from my usual match previews and football betting tips for this week's article.  I feel it is a good time to talk about why David Beckham should stay in Milan and indeed why LA Galaxy should grant him his move to the Northern Italy capital. As a player Beckham is a great [...]

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.

Reports out of Italy has Juventus targeting Julio Cruz who is out of a contract at Inter Milan. Transfer Market Web is also noting that Fiorentina, Parma and Bologna are all targeting Cruz.
Related -- Juventus: Transfer Rumours 2009-10 Coverage Center

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.

Giampaolo Pazzini celebrates his goal in Sampdoria's 4-1 win over Bologna just one week after suffering a broken nose and being told he would be out for a month.

His protective mask fittingly describes him as "crazy."

Inspired by this form of injury-induced expression, Cristiano Ronaldo has already decided that if he ever breaks his nose, his mask will read: "effeminate.

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.

Last week, donning the number 8 on his shirt, Kaka was revealed to the world as a Real Madrid player in front of 40,000 adoring 'Los Blancos' fans. They turned up to celebrate his arrival and see him in the clubs famous all white kit and for many loyal 'Madridistas' and keen neutrals it was a day of renewed hope and what some would expect to be the start of a new force in Spain and Europe.

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.

Italy produces the hottest WAGs and here's irrefutable proof... Giorgia used to date Christian Vieri. Now she's with Bologna midfielder Davide Bombardini, who could reasonably be considered to be one of the luckiest men in the world. Click on the...

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.

As everyone may know by now, this year's Champions League final on May 27 between Manchester United and Barcelona will be held in Rome's Stadio Olimpico. However this big event may have an effect on the Serie A schedule. UEFA rules state that the stadium must be in UEFA's hands at least one week before the event.

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 Italian Serie A is just about to start as Internazional (Inter Milan) aim for their 5th straight league title. Can they win it again or will AC Milan or Juventus finally stop their streak? Here's a preview of the upcoming season along with predictions.

Who will win the Scudetto this year?

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.

Seedorf's wonderful solo effort on 75 minutes was enough for Milan to claim all three points at home against Bologna. It was not the most inspiring match nor will it fill Rossoneri hearts with hope for the season, however, it was a strong enough performance by the Leonardo's side to pick up a vital win.

Does anyone know who Adailton is? Or Pablo Counago? And what have they got in common?
Give up? Ok, no need to rush to google: the answer is that they both finished the FIFA U20 World Cup as top scorers (1997 and 1999 respectively) and were considered among the best talents of their generation.

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.

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.

With little under a week since the dramas of the Manchester City saga unfolded, Kaka seems to have resumed his life and his football as per normal. And what better way to do so than by scoring two goals and helping your team to a much deserved win. Whether a rumoured moved to Madrid is in the cards for the future, only God knows, for the moment though one can only comment on what one can see.

Summer is always the time of fan's high expectations, newspapers go like mad thanks to the bombastic headlines announcing the transfers that often end up as failures. We have already made our list of wasted money this season in Serie A. Still, there have been also several good moves and some of the players rose [.

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.

After nearly two months of hunger Lazio made peace with the Olimpico crowd Saturday, defeating Bologna with two goals by Mauro Zarate and obtaining their first home victory of 2009. It was a double-rebirth of sorts, with the the team collectively answering their coach's "wake-up" call and their Argentine striker (whose last goal was in [.