As the title reads, former Portuguese international and ex-Mourinho pupil Costinha plays for Atalanta and is probably the biggest waste of money in all of Italian football today. Back in the summer of 2007, Costinha's contract expired at Atletico Madrid. Atalanta thought they were making a real steal signing him, as be brought a wealth of international experience to their midfield.

The Gazzetta dello Sport is arguably the most famous sports newspaper in Italy, selling more copies than rivals Corriere dello Sport and Tuttosport. It is world famous for it's pink pages and has been printed in pink since 1899. The current head editor of the Gazzetta, Luigi Garlando, has always been a critic of Lippi since his return to the national team, has always been pro-Cassano, and doesn't understand why Lippi hates to answer questions at press conferences.

Recently, it was reported everywhere that Christian Vieri was hanging up his boots. Vieri, at one time one of the most feared strikers in all of world football, had given all he had and was going more and more into a decline, so he it looked like he wanted to finally call it quits at age 36.

I know, the Cassano-National Team debate is getting old and boring. But this was too funny. In the 5th minute of the game yesterday, a fan ran onto the pitch wearing a t-shirt with the Superman logo and with the words "Cassano in Nazionale" (Cassano on the National Team). He jogged around the pitch for a while and then made his way off the pitch and was promptly arrested.

The Italy U-21's continued their very disappointing qualifying campaign with another loss, this time away to Hungary. The Azzurrini needed a win to get back on track, but now qualification is getting more and more difficult. The Hungarians won 2-0, with goals coming from Nemeth and Koman (both players played on the Hungarian side that knocked the Italy U-20's out of the U-20 World Cup last month).

Since Lippi has taken over the national team for a second time, the big question has always been, "Why aren't you calling up Antonio Cassano?" Cassano has widely been recognized as the best Italian player at the moment and there is no other talent in Italy that can even reach his level at the moment (maybe an in-form Totti).

Fairly good week for goals, as only one game finished 0-0 (Catania-Napoli, but ask Takayuki Morimoto about that). The top scorer table is still wide open, as Di Natale started strong but now has cooled off so he remains at 9, while Hamsik is second with 7 and that's impressive for a midfielder.

Milan has really jumped up the table these past few weeks. After the horrible start where everyone condemned the Rossoneri to a season of misery, Leonardo's squad has made a complete turnaround, finally playing well and becoming contenders once again. They now find themselves 5 points behind leaders Inter and only 2 behind Juventus and saying the word Scudetto shouldn't be met with laughter.

One of the players playing extremely well at the moment is Genoa fantasista Raffaele Palladino. Palladino has always been a player that could do things with the ball that others could only dream of doing, but he never had the consistency to show that talent at a high level.

A few nice goals this week, but nothing extraordinary. Giuseppe Mascara scored one of his trademark wonder-goals, and Marco Borriello got back on the scoresheet with 2 goals (the second a nice scissor kick) after almost a year. Diego Milito got back to his scoring ways as well after being absent through injury, and Mirko Vucinic finally scored his first goal of the season.

Napoli won vs. Juventus in Torino for the first time since November 20, 1988, when Maradona's Napoli won 5-3. Since then, there had been 11 wins and 5 ties, and Napoli hadn't scored in Torino since March of 1998. This Napoli side has been rejuvenated under Walter Mazzarri, and they have shown they have a never say die attitude that keeps them working for the full 90 minutes.

Fabrizio Miccoli has really become the undisputed leader of Palermo. The diminutive fantasista, or il Romario del Salento as he is so aptly nicknamed, has been putting in great performances this season and had a great year last season, and it looks like he has finally found a place to show all of his talent.

After the international break, the man of the moment is undoubtedly Alberto Gilardino. The Fiorentina striker scored 4 goals in 2 matches with the Azzurri, including the impressive hat trick in 14 minutes vs. Cyprus. He now has 16 goals in 38 appearances (now level with Gianluca Vialli and Luca Toni) for the Azzurri and looks to be the headline striker heading into South Africa this June.

As everyone knows by now, Roberto Donadoni was relieved of his duties as Napoli manager and was replaced by former Sampdoria boss Walter Mazzarri. We can't deny that Donadoni was one of the greatest wingers Italian football has ever produced. But his managerial career so far? Not great. We really don't know where Donadoni is at as a manager or if he will ever improve.

Sorry I didn't get up a weekend round-up yesterday, it was a really busy day. However I don't want to disrupt the weekly order so I'll go straight to Goals of the Week. Last week was probably the worst goals of the week post of all time. I think this week made up for it with some quality strikes.

This was an interesting story I came across today. Apparently there is a "Little Italy" of sorts in the Bulgarian First Division (official named the Bulgarian TBI A Professional Football Group, which is ridiculous), as Bulgarian club PFC Botev Plovdiv is owned by an Italian owner, has an Italian chairman, an Italian-Congolese sporting director, an Italian manager, and a roster that contains 10 Italian players (soon to be 11).

It's not old news that the Matarrese family wants to sell Bari. Although they have been in charge of the Pugliese club since 1977, they no longer have the want to be heads of a football club and have had the club on sale for years. Last year former Real Madrid president Lorenzo Sanz was interested in taking charge of the club, but the deal fell through.

I'm just going to throw it out there: this might be the worst goals of the week post of all time. Nothing spectacular at all this weekend, most goals were very plain and ordinary. Of the 18 goals scored this weekend, about 3 are top goal worthy. But let's see this week's goals of the week (hoping that Giornata 7 brings us better ones):

Massimo Maccarone vs.

Sampdoria are top of the table alone for the first time in 18 years. A week ago I wrote an article saying that Sampdoria could be the surprise of the season, and right now that hypothesis is still holding up. While it's almost impossible for them to win the scudetto and considering the fact that Gigi Del Neri's teams usually suffer a drop in form after the winter break, they should be challenging for a spot in Europe next season, whether that be Europa League or Champions League that remains to be seen.

I always like to watch videos of bloopers, and this time I've found a Serie A blooper video from the early 2000's. Always entertaining, and it includes a mistake from Buffon!! (how often do you see those?)

Video after the jump.

And since we're on the topic of Buffon mistakes, here's another one I remember from a couple of years ago:

Despite having a strong U-21 side, Italy's other youth national teams don't really have a glorious history. All of Italy's youth focus is directed to the U-21 team, and you never hear anything about the other sides. In addition, besides the U-21 team Italy's youth sides have never really won anything, despite participating at many tournaments.

Lots of goals scored this week, with only one 0-0 draw (Napoli-Udinese) and many teams scoring 3+ goals. There were some nice ones this week. Goals after the jump.

Emanuel Rivas vs. Atalanta - The Bari midfielder scores a nice opening goal. Dribbles to the center and unleashes a laser strike from around 20 yards out.

Since there is a mid-week round this Wednesday, I'll get a super Weekend Round-up post up on Thursday. If you look at the Serie A table right now, you'll see that leading the top of the table is Sampdoria (tied with Juventus, but ahead of goals scored). Sampdoria have never won their first 4 games ever in their history.

Let's start by saying that Roberto Baronio isn't exactly a household name in Italian calcio. The casual fan may not even know who Roberto Baronio is or what position he plays (Baronio is a classic regista that plays in front of the defense and dictates the play. His passing skills are excellent, especially his long passing, and he is good at set pieces).

In July I had already posted a video of the week with some Italian amateur calcio bloopers from the mid-90's. Well, I found even more Italian amateur calcio bloopers from the mid-90's for our viewing pleasure. Video after the jump.

By now he has made his decision. Amauri wants to play for the Italian national team. Dunga doesn't want to call him up for Brazil, and Amauri knows that Lippi is interested in calling him up to the Azzurri. Amauri thought he would be getting his passport sometime this month and that Lippi would call him up for October's World Cup qualifiers, but that is not the case, as a new Italian law (passed on August 8th) will now prevent Amauri from getting his Italian passport until March 2010.

It was a weekend of some nice goals. First, let's just say that Fabio Quagliarella ALMOST scored the goal of the season (he did however score 2 goals on the night). You can watch that video here. Diego scored his first goals in Serie A, Julio Cruz scored his first goals for Lazio, Alberto Paloschi continues to look more and more like the new Pippo Inzaghi, Giampaolo Pazzini continues to score, and Antonio Cassano worked some magic again.

Most Italian soccer fans should be familiar with the name of Andrea Russotto. As a youngster he was dubbed as "the next Roberto Baggio" and "Antonio Cassano with a level head" but up until now he has not even been close to living up to those names. His story is a bit particular, and for those of you that don't know it here it is.

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.

The new Italy U-21 side (who lost their first friendly August 12 vs. Russia 3-2) will now start qualifying for the 2011 UEFA U-21 European Championship to be held in Denmark. The Azzurrini will play two games, one on September 4th away to Wales in Swansea, and the other on September 8th at home vs.

The Champions League draw always provides entertainment. Even though the random drawing and the whole ceremony is fairly boring, it's always interesting because it always seems to draw clubs together that are related in some way. Sometimes they'll gift a club with revenge against a club that knocked them out the year before, or other times provide a real group of death.

I just got back from vacation so I won't have time to put up a mega Serie A preview like I would've wanted, but by now we have an idea at where the 20 Serie A clubs stand for the coming season. So Serie A finally kicks off tomorrow with Bologna-Fiorentina and Siena-Milan, and the rest of the games come our way on Sunday.

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.

It was made known pretty early that the contracts of Julio Cruz and Christian Panucci were not going to be renewed by Inter and Roma at the end of the season. Both players were linked with a host of clubs but no offer became concrete and up until yesterday it was anybody's guess where Cruz and Panucci would wind up playing next season.

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.