Inzaghi Minor

By: Penny | May 26th, 2008

It’s quite unsettling that the Italian papers record every minor detail of Serie A player’s lives. For instance, Inzaghi watched the Champions League Final with Galliani, the frankly terrifying President of AC Milan. “That,” as the gazetta accurately observed, “must have been a melancholy evening.”

What really put the tin hat on Inzaghi’s week however was having to pay a parking ticket for his younger brother Simone, who seems to make a habit of having fruitless discussions with traffic wardens about the exact placing of his no doubt expensive car. Simone’s nickname is Inzaghino, little Inzaghi, which is something in the nature of a joke because he is considerably larger than his elder brother. He is also as beautiful as the rosy-fingered dawn, but that’s got nothing to do with football.

This probably won’t be the last time that Inzaghi has to bail Simone out, since by my reckoning Simone’s contract with Lazio is up this summer and it’s unlikely, to say the least, that they will be renewing it. Simone’s career deserves a whole discussion in itself. He’s been on loan to Atalanta this season, mainly on the bench, and hasn’t scored although he has set a few goals up. He had a particularly good game against Milan, but there’s no suggestion that the nerrazzurri want to take up the option either.

As he’s 32 and injury prone it seems unlikely that any Serie A club will take him on, and he’d be a gamble for any Serie B side, always supposing he wanted to drop a division. It seems entirely possible he will retire, although I hope, against all indications, that he does find a team. In his early days at Lazio he was a very good forward, and he is one of only five players to score four goals in a Champions League game, against Marseilles in 2000. It would be a little sad to see him retire before his brother, without one last chance to shine again in his own right.