September 21st, 2002 posted to Voyageurs Soccer Talk
Insider
report on the Hamilton Thunder
by Italo hater
First and foremost anyone who knows Italo Ferrari or has heard of
him in the past knows that he is a lying, conniving, two-faced theif. Apparently
he can no longer show his face in Woodbridge because he has screwed over too
many people in both business and in soccer.
As far as the Thunder
situation is concerned Mr. Ferrari is living up to his reputation. It is true
that the players have not been payed in three months. For some it has been 4
months. In addition, the coaches and office staff have not been payed either.
Mr. Ferrari has not payed one bill in the Thunder office. This includes the
phone(which is no longer in service), the uniforms, the internet, the website
designer, the field rental, the buses that were used at the beginning of the
season, and the list goes on and on.
Further to this, Mr. Ferrari has on
several occasions demanded from the coach that his son Roberto start in goal.
For anyone who has seen this 19 year old that looks and acts (and plays for that
matter) like he is 15, you would know that no coach in his right mind would have
this guy play an under 21 game let alone a CPSL game. This is evident in the
fact that he has not 1 win to his credit!!!! This totally kills any team unity
as all the players would cringe and drop there heads when they found out that
this guy was starting.
Some of the promises that have been made from
this
man is that the players would get payed by the end of the week, the end
of next week, the end of the month, etc, etc. Also he says that he would grant
any player his release because of lack of payment. He has even gone so far to
write fraudulent cheques on several occasions to keep people quite (correct me
if I'm wrong but isn't that illegal).
So now the team has demanded Mr.
Ferrari live up to his promises. So what does he do? He goes and gets rid of his
veteran players. The ones that have put him into the play-offs, sacraficed time
off of the field for promotional events and the ones that convinced the younger
players to stick out when things were looking grim back in July. Why? Because he
realizes that they have had enough of his b.s. and that they will retaliate. He
has threatened the younger players with legal action and made them even more
promises of payment. Because they are so naive they believe him. This is the
only reason the team is continuing on at the moment. Mark my words, the team is
done after they lose in the first round of the play-offs. He is just buying his
time and trying to finish the season so he doesn't look bad to the people of
Hamilton where he has the potential for big business deals. He will then make
some lame excuse on why the team didn't survive and quietly slip away with his
name still intact (in Hamilton anyways). Needless to say this will not happen if
I have anything to say about it!!!!
Where does the league stand in all
this? Well they have been monitering the situation for about a month now and
know all of the details, yet they plan to do nothing. They too are hoping that
the season ends without controversy and they will deal with it later. They have
absolutely no concern for the players of this team or of the rest of the league.
President Vince Ursini meet with team and in retrospect totally lied to them
about what the league was planning to do with this situation. As long as the
team plays, regardless of the 11 on the field is his only concern. In private
conversations with team members he has also made several claims that were
untrue.
So we will now see how this fiasco unfolds. You wanted some
info, and there you go. Any more questions just ask and will try my best to get
the answers for you.
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