First off, look at that armband on Dema . . . looks great!

Ok folks, here are your updates on our injured Bulls, as we look ahead to Saturday and our encounter with the Fire, @ Chicago . . . .

Things are very different these days for the Brazilian strikers on either side of Milan. Ronaldo, for his part, is both no longer fat (Who knew it was just a glandular problem?) and also desperately needed by his club. Adriano, meanwhile, remains both fat and an afterthought, though he may get to play this weekend, thanks only to the fact that choices one and two could be rested after a week of internationals.

. . . . WHO WOULDA GUESSED?!?! . . . .

First off, People Magazine (in espanol) has A RED BULL as one of the 10 SEXIEST MEN in AMERICAN in its newest magazine. CHECK IT OUT.

Simultaneously, they are breaking down the possible end of year award winners on MLSNET (MVP, rookie of the year, etc.).

And of course, the only RBNY representative in BOTH catagories and currently trailing Luciano Emilio for league MVP?

At the end of the first half of the Juve-Udinese match on Sunday, an irate fan by the name of Nicholas Ravasio lobbed a smoke bomb onto the pitch (Aren't they supposed to be frisking people now, so they can't bring that sort of thing into the ground? My, how shocking that it got through.) in an eloquent form of protest against a bad call, only to have himself pointed out by the fans around.

First of all, I am injured. Worst injury for a blogger too - broken tip of my middle finger (I will put up pics later). So expect QUICK and SMALL updates such as the following (at least till i am better or figure out this splint):

Did you know we had injuries? Yea surprise surprise!

Did you know that DC was already gearing up for their DP next year?

Since this was already 3 days ago, here are just some late thoughts from your fractured fingered blogging wonder kind :

In order to keep things on the up-and-up, referee assignments in Italy are not revealed to the public until the day before the matches. Of course, that does nothing to avoid corruption with the referee designator himself can be bought off, but now that The Great Collini is in charge, everything is going to be different. Right? Or not.

The people at Livorno were so confident Daniele Orsato was going to be their referee for today's game against Napoli that they announced it on their website.

When Francesco Coco revealed last week (You have no idea if this is going to be the porn or reality TV part, do you?) that he was quitting football to become a film star, one assumed he a)meant something beyond the (alleged) gay orgy photographers (allegedly) caught him in the midst of last year, and b)that he'd actually make, you know, films.

There's a long article in today's La Gazzetta (and of course it's not online) detailing the salaries of each team, from the high rollers like Kaka and Francesco Totti to the poverty-stricken trio on the bottom, Marco Mancosu, Jan Koprivac and Simone Iacoponi, all of whom make only €40,000/season.

Not surprisingly, Ricky Kaka tops the Table of Riches with an after-tax salary of €6 million, followed by The Great Totti who earns €5.

•Despite reportedly being outplayed for stretches by Albania, the Azzurrini pulled out a 1-0 away win today on a goal from Robert Acquafresca to remain top of their Euro 2009 qualifying group. Though they didn't play particularly well this week, the U-21s have taken all possible points from their first three matches, and coach Pierluigi Casiraghi can breathe easy for a while as everyone spends their time glaring in the general direction of Roberto Donadoni.

The Kaka-obsessed Spanish press are going way out on a limb today, prediction that the object of their affection will win this year's Ballon d'Or when it is handed out on December 2. Even though the ballots have not even gone out yet, the people at AS seem quite sure they're right about this one, presumably because of the endless praise the Brazilian receives from footballers at all corners of the earth.

•Luca Toni continues to completely own the Bundesliga, scoring his fifth goal over the weekend, while wee Giuseppe Rossi scored one and setting up another in about 20 minutes for Villareal, both of them leaving us wondering what would have happened if they'd stayed home. (And no, I don't mean New Jersey in Rossi's case.)

•Crowd trouble at Napoli's Stadio San Paolo last night has led the FIGC to close the ground entirely for Sunday's match against Genoa.

Roberto Donadoni, who has spent the last two weeks offering up sacrifices to a slew of gods in an effort to winpowers of miraculous recovery for his rickety crew of defenders, yesterday announced his squad for the upcoming Euro 2008 qualifiers.

For once, it's hard to find too much to complain about with the team. Apart from Marco Materazzi, all the regulars are there (the semi-injured duo of Cannavaro and Luca Toni, even if they're not fully fit for the France match, will certainly be healthy for the trip to Ukraine), including Daniele De Rossi, whose absence from the Hungary friendly was unsettling to say the least.

Really, it's not. How do we know this? Why, because Roberto Donadoni himself tells us so for your information, he feels he has the full support of the FIGC, no matter what happens in Kiev tonight. Yeah, and it's always such an encouraging sign when people feel the need to say things like that. (In addition to proclaiming his comfort in the job, Donadoni also "has spoken also about the not easiest relationship with the information organs.

Gianluca Falsini and Armando Pantanelli are having quite a summer. First, they were frozen out by Catania (Pantanelli has since moved to Avellino in Serie B) and not even allowed to train with the rest of the squad, then they actually won the lawsuit they brought against the club for the Shocking!Treatment they received, and were restored to normal training as a result.

•Everyone and his brother are proclaiming mad love for Gila. A memo must have gone out, or something.

•The FIGC are getting serious: Angelo Pagotto was just slapped with an eight-year ban after his second positive test for cocaine. Wow. If this was in the US, he'd have taken a very high-profile, very short trip to rehab and found Jesus by now, but since he's 34 already I guess that sort of penance wouldn't do much to help the career.

Two of the four Count 'em, four! Italian teams in the Champions League group stages open their play today, with Milan hosting Benfica and Lazio traveling to Greek champions Olympiakos.

The Milan match holds an added interest for Rossoneri fans because it marks the return to the San Siro of Rui Costa, a former key figure at the club and also one of the classiest, most awesome men in football.

First, the good news: As a result of the draw and win in the recent Euro qualifiers, Italy have climbed two spots to the top of FIFA's world rankings. Woo hoo! (Or, since it's Talk Like a Pirate Day: ARRRRR!)

The new top three are Italy, Argentina and Brazil, who had been top but had enough points expire to drop two spots. The leading trio has a significant point advantage over the rest of the crowd, but Germany and the Netherlands climbed into fourth and fifth respectively as a result of their performances over the past few weeks, while the French fell two spots to sixth thanks to that loss to Scotland.

Paolo Maldini, normally among the calmest men on earth, is really, really pissed off today. And it's not at, say, Ronaldo for being fat, or Gila for being useless. Instead, he's furious with Milan supporters, who he feels don't actually live up to that whole "support" thing.

The immediate motivation for his mini-rant was apparently the relative silence at the San Siro during the Benfica match (it better be only that, and not the ovation they gave Rui Costa), but Maldini's statement is very broad, taking in pretty much ALL home matches, and actually blames the fans for the team's failure to win the the home leg of the Milan derby last season.

You may or may not have noticed, but I'm sort of a big Adrian Mutu fan. He's turned into an adult over the past few years and has been huge for Fiorentina, both as a player and, increasing, as a leader, both of which are pretty impressive for a guy whose main interests in the past seemed to be coke and porn stars. He's not, however, grown up quite enough to reign in his ego and avoid giving already fired-up opponents bulletin board material ahead of huge matches.

For though of you who were blissfully unaware of the terrible injustices that took place yesterday, Rodrigo Taddei and Carlo Ancelotti want everyone to know that Roma and Milan didn't get full points because of the GOD DAMN REFEREES. Yes, that's reasonable. I mean, dropped points are very rarely the fault of the people on the pitch, right? And surely the fact that Milan managed to score on only one of their 19 shots had nothing to do with the loss.

First and most importantly, we have the proverbial top-of-the-table clash between Inter, AKA The Team Without Any Defenders, and Roma, AKA The Team That Plays the Pretty Football. Totti is back for Roma, though Alberto Aquilani is unlikely to figure, which is a small mercy for Inter. Inter, meanwhile, are falling apart at the seams: Despite hopeful muttering in the press, Crisitian Chivu isn't even fit for the bench, Matrix is still broken, Nelson Rivas is out for a month with heart problems (!

The good news is that the defense looked surprisingly solid, Fabio Cannavaro seems to have remembered who he is and had a solid game and a spectacular second half (as much as one can defend spectacularly), and Marco Materazzi's tshirt completely confirmed his awesomeness. Plus, a point is better than nothing. The bad news is pretty much everything else, from the growing injury list to Italy's total lack of an attacking threat to the suspension of Rino Gattuso for the Ukraine match.

Good news, Milan fans: Ronaldo is due back in Italy very shortly. Woo hoo! There is, however, the small issue of that treatment he received in Brazil, which hasn't been approved by the Italian Olympic Committee and therefore has him in hot water with The Powers that Be in Italy.

The treatment, which I still don't understand despite help from both Channel 4 and Marco, involves injecting protein strains from Ronaldo's own blood directly into the damaged tissue, a cutting-edge procedure which supposedly encourages healing.

When Antonio Cassano went down over the weekend in a friendly against Swiss side Bellinzona one organized in large part to help him get fit it was feared his leg injury was severe enough to keep him out for "several weeks," a dismal occurrence for a player so desperate to make a fresh start. Depending on who you believe, the latest is either a great relief or sad news for the "unruly striker," because some people say he'll be out only for a couple weeks, while others are reporting he'll be on the shelf for a full month.

Continuing this week's trend of publicizing everyone in calcio's salaries, the list of how much each coach in Serie A earns was released today by La Gazzetta, and topping the list is everyone's favorite tactician, Inter's Roberto Mancini. In fact, Mancini is the second highest-paid manager in all of Europe, his €5 million topping every salary but that of The Great Jose Mourinho (with whom Mancio was once rumored to be about to swap jobs), who earns €5.

As you may have heard, Christian Chivu picked up a shoulder injury in Romania's game last weekend, and sat out their midweek friendly as a result. Though the injury was originally thought to be fairly minor, La Gazzatta is reporting this morning that Chivu will be out for a full month, a revelation that is horrible news for Inter, who are already without both Marco Materazzi and probably Walter Samuel, and great news for everyone who likes it when bad things happen to Inter.

Normally there'd be little interest in Torino's trip to Palermo on Sunday (and I'll admit that I might be the only one who cares, even now), but since the visit will mark the return of Eugenio Corini to the team he was a big part of bringing back to Serie A and which he captained for several years, it's going to have a much higher than usual emotional content.

As you may recall, Inter are headed to Turkey this week with about 1.5 defenders in their team, and rather than blaming the crew who got themselves suspended for that fight against Valencia last season, club President Massimo Moratti has decided to turn his rage (flaccid, old-man rage though it may be) on new arrival Cristian Chivu.

According to Moratti, Chivu is a moron (though he didn't use exactly that word) for not pulling out of Romania's midweek friendly against German, the match in which he suffered the shoulder injury that has him on the sidelines.

Negatives have been crashing down on Juve lately, particularly since last Saturday. First, they fell apart against Udinese and lost their perfect record. Boo. And, in the process of being beaten, they lost Mauro Camoranesi (not only one of their best players this season, but also one of their chief whiners) for between six and eight weeks thanks to a fairly serious thigh problem.

Inter go into today's match at Fenerbahçe with a laughably thin defense, though the last-minute recovery of Walter Samuel looks likely to save them from having to play Esteban Cambiasso at centerback. (Shockingly, the Turkish club expects to be able to find space into which to attack. You don't say.) Apart from that potential debacle, the media's attention ahead of the clash has been on the wonderful Zlatan, who hasn't scored in Europe for almost two years but will doubtless correct that situation in no time once the match kicks off.

When he wasn't talking about how rubbish his team were in Turkey (See? At least he noticed. That's progress.), Inter's Roberto Mancini also spent his time with the press yesterday denying that he's feuding with Luciano Spalletti.

Apparently things have been bubbling under since Mancini blamed his team's Supercup loss to Roma on a shortage of right-sided players as opposed to playing a better team, something which understandably pissed Spalletti off.

Juve fans can be excused for spending a lot of time yesterday running around and squeeling with joy. First, their incredibly annoying hero David Trezeguet scored his 100th Serie A goal, which for some reason makes people happy. Second, Vincezo Iaquinta's late goal secured them a point off the best team in Serie A (at the moment, anyway), giving everyone a probably totally irrational Scudetto hope.

It's been a tough week for Inter coach Roberto Mancini, what with his everyone pushing Jose Mourinho towards his job, defender Nelson Rivas collapsing in training, and his team not only drawing with Livorno, but actually managing to make them look lively and threatening. (Just so we're clear, this is Livorno we're talking about.) Plus, before Sunday's match there was an article in Corriere dello Sport reporting that tension at Inter "is reaching [the] breaking point.

•Former Milan player Oscar Damiani, now a FIFA agent who somehow oversees his old club's transfers, has revealed to the press that Milan decided mid-summer to stick with poor Alberto Gilardino after they had already made "positive contact" with strikers such as Luca Toni, Ruud Van Nistelrooy and David Trezeguet. Brilliant. (In case you're not up on these things, Trezeguet has five goals in four games, while Gila hasn't scored with anyone but his wife in months.

In order to keep things on the up-and-up, referee assignments in Italy are not revealed to the public until the day before the matches. Of course, that does nothing to avoid corruption with the referee designator himself can be bought off, but now that The Great Collini is in charge, everything is going to be different. Right? Or not.

The people at Livorno were so confident Daniele Orsato was going to be their referee for today's game against Napoli that they announced it on their website.

If you act now, you can pick up an Italian football club for cheap, albeit one that's slightly used: Serie C side Juve Stabia is up for sale on eBay, and it's priced to move only €515 as of about 930am EST!

Now, because this is Italy and nothing is too weird to be true, one has to wonder, at least for a second, whether the owner has just had enough and figured eBay was the best way to unload his club right quick.

Jesus, what is it with watch-muggings in Italy? Poor Bobo Vieri was held up back in February for his outrageously expensive watch (Seriously. It was worth €16,000. That's, like, a small car, for the love of God), and just today the great Serse Cosmi was robbed getting out of his car in the middle of Brescia, and had two Rolexes stolen.

In a wide-ranging interview with Sky Italia yesterday, Inter's Hernan Crespo very wisely said something along the lines of "HELL YEAH!" when he was asked about the prospect of Jose Mourinho moving to Italy.

Still technically a Chelsea player, the Argentine obviously has some experience with The Special One and, despite his unhappiness during this time in London, doesn't blame the gaffer for his problems.

Apart from when he sagely announced that it could be "a problem" for Anotoni Di Natale if the striker didn't leave Udinese (Seriously? What, he wouldn't take an actual, productive striker because he wasn't playing in Europe? Give me a break.) for a bigger club, Roberto Donadoni has been quiet lately, just glorying in the fact that no one is calling for him to be fired this minute.