Roma sign Giuly

Ludovic Giuly has com­pleted his move from Barcelona to AS Roma. Barca accepted an offer of between 3.2 and 4.4 mil­lion euros over the week­end and Giuly trav­elled to Italy on Mon­day to finalise the trans­fer. He passed a med­ical and agreed terms on a three-year deal. Giuly had been linked with a return to for­mer club Monaco, as well as sev­eral other top Euro­pean clubs, but opted for Roma.

Giuly started his career with Lyon before join­ing AS Monaco in 1998. He left Monaco to join Cata­lan giants Barcelona after the Monaco were beaten by FC Porto in the 2004 Cham­pi­ons League final. Giuly finally got a Cham­pi­ons League winner’s medal two years later, when Barca beat Arse­nal in the 2006 final. Giuly has had a hard time crack­ing the first eleven at Barca, which caused him to not be selected for the France squad for last year’s World Cup final in Ger­many. He had a sec­ond incon­sis­tent sea­son with Barca in La Liga last year and has fallen down the peck­ing order with the emer­gence of Lionel Messi.

Roma, last season’s Serie A runners-up, have also brought in Brazil­ian cen­tral defender Juan from Ger­man club Bayer Lev­erkusen for a fee of 6.3 mil­lion euros ($8.44 mil­lion) and have signed the player to a four-year con­tract. As part of the deal, Roma will visit Lev­erkusen for a pre-season friendly on July 29.

The move for Juan had been a sig­nal to many that Roman­ian defender Cris­t­ian Chivu would be moved to either Real Madrid, Barcelona or Serie A rivals Inter Milan. Real’s move for FC Porto’s Pepe sig­naled the end of their inter­est. Barcelona acquired Gabriel Mil­ito from Real Zaragoza when a deal for Chivu stalled over the player’s wage demands.

Inter are also keep­ing their dis­tance and do not want to upset Roma by bid­ding for the player. Chivu is reported to be ready to axe his agent as a result of the fail­ure to find him a new club. It will be inter­est­ing to see what will hap­pen if he remains at the club for the com­ing season.

Roma have also brought in Ghana­ian cen­tral mid­fielder Ahmed Barusso from Serie B Rim­ini. Barusso has drawn com­par­isons to Chelsea’s Michael Essien, with his abil­ity to dis­rupt attacks and his deadly shot from long dis­tance. He scored 10 goals in 32 appear­ances for Rimini.

Fur­ther bol­ster­ing their squad, Roma wrapped up per­ma­nent trans­fers for three play­ers that were on loan at the club last sea­son. Striker Mirko Vucinic and Marco Cas­setti move to Roma per­ma­nently from Lecce for a total of 9 mil­lion euros. They also reached an agree­ment with Inter Milan to take full con­trol of David Pizarro’s reg­is­tra­tion. The two clubs had been hag­gling over the issue for a while but even­tu­ally a deal was done. Inter had wanted Chris­t­ian Chivu as part of the deal for Pizarro but Roma were insis­tent on keep­ing the two deals separate.

In another move of note, vet­eran striker Vin­cenzo Mon­tella was sold to Sam­p­do­ria after 8 sea­sons with Roma. Mon­tella spent the sec­ond half of last sea­son on loan at Eng­lish Pre­mier League club Fulham.