PROFILE

CRISTIANO ZANETTI

CAREER

Cristiano Zanetti belongs to the category who has had an amazing career. Starting off with Fiorentina as a youngster he never got any matches with the senior team, save from a couple.

So Cristiano leaves Serie A for Serie B to get some playing time. Venezia would become his next destination the season 96/97. Played 21 matches and became a U-21 player.

But his next season would become his best season so far. He moved once again and it was to Reggiana. This was the team we bought him from. Pretty unknown but one of the most impressive U-21 players in Italy at this time.

Then it started. Became bought by Inter the season 98/99 and all of a sudden we had two Zanetti´s. Was participating in our pre-season and was rather impressive. However, he wasn´t impressive enough since he didn´t get to play any matches for us. So we had to come up with something in order to him to get some playing time. So we loaned him out already in October, to another Serie A team - Cagliari. Hampered by injuries this season, but otherwise he was one of their best players. Impressed so much actually that another big team wanted him.

Just the year after when he came back to Inter he was once again apart of a swap with Roma. Inter who had negotiated to buy Luigi Di Biagio from Roma, now threw in Cristiano Zanetti in the deal. He would be jointly owned by the two big teams. This was perhaps the best thing when looking at the result.

His first season with Roma he basically just acted a bench player. Just played 11 matches whereas I guess many of them were subs.

It was really the next season his huge breakthrough would come. Now more experienced and not so young anymore, he would see some playing time. Season 2000/01 when Roma won the league, Cristiano was actually a starter for almost all the season. The best thing for Cristiano was that Emerson became injured for a very long time. So Cristiano replaced him in the central midfield. Roma turned out to win the whole league and he had a very impressive season.

Now we fans and Inter started to realise what kind of player we actually owned. Cuper took charge and there was two players he wanted immidately. Mohamed Kallon and Cristiano Zanetti. So we bought out the second half, since Roma as well didn´t plan on keeping Cristiano since Emerson was back and they had bought Lima.

So back to Inter again, which we should be really happy about. Not many players would wanna come back to a team that has loaned you out for so many times. 4 times we kept him in another team!

It didn´t start off good for Cristiano who became injured before the season had started. Missed a couple of months at the beginning and it was unknown how he would cope with the pressure at Inter.
But as soon as he was back, Cuper used him as a starter along with Di Biagio who in central midfield and he became a fundamental player.

Cristiano is also now a starter with the Italian NT. Was played in the WC, but has sadly had a reputation of being worse with the NT than with Inter.

At the moment, Cristiano is recovering from an injury and is doing athletic workout.

AS A PLAYER

Cristiano is a defensive midfielder, but with many skills that not many defensive midfielders had. When he was played instead of Emerson because he was injured, he took the defensive playmaker part. Somewhat different of the player he is supposed to be. Tommasi had the ballwinning part, which made Cristiano distribute many balls. And he did it splendid since he is a very good passer on the ball.

I rate him as a player that is the best in the world at pressing players. He never stands still and await the player. He runs directly at them and force them to make a quick pass and hoping for a mistake. This obviously requires a lot of stamina. Something he has!

He runs full stop for 90 minutes. Sacrifising himself completely for the team and win so many balls it´s unbelievable. Sometimes when you think he was beaten, you see him accelerate with full pace and win the ball back and then distribute it as well. Then he continues running for the rest of the match. Many players would be exhausted, but not him. He´s an extremely athletic person.

So what flaws does Cristiano have then? Simple, really:

Defending set pieces!

The man simply sucks at it. He´s not a good header and has no jumping skills. He causes many goals for his team because he is very bad at defending corners. One example is against Lazio where Simeone scored. That was him who was marking him. Instead of jumping up he tries to thug the shirt of the player. It doesn´t work. He needs to jump up and beat the player.
This is a reason for why he sometimes can look really amatuerish.

What I like about Cristiano is his fighting spirit and that also improves the tactics. He can cover up for any player since he is running all over the place. Last season he helped Gresko and Recoba a lot in their defending on the left flank.
This year he will make Dalmat to be able to move forward a lot.
He is just very important for our strategies.

Never come down on the ballwinners. They play a huge part of the team.

Jimmy Fredholm