Euroscene: Tonight should have been a big night for 25-year-old Vincenzo Iaquinta. He ought to have been leading the Udinese attack in a Champions League fixture against Barcelona, Ronaldhino et al at the Nou Camp.
This might well have been another important step in a blossoming career which, in the last month, has seen him establish his place in Marcello Lippi's World Cup squad as well as score a hat-trick in Udinese's first Champions League Group Phase fixture, a 3-0 win against Greek club Panathinaikois two weeks ago.
Instead, Iaquinta will be at home in Friuli, watching this one on television. Neither injury nor suspension keeps Iaquinta off the pitch. He is out of the team because of a dispute with his club over the signing of a new contract.
The Iaquinta story is emblematic of the problems faced by a medium-sized club like Udinese, which struggles hard to keep its books balanced. Over the years, Udinese has introduced many talented players, Italian and foreign, to Serie A football.
Players such as German Oliver Bierhoff, Dane Thomas Helveg, Argentine Nestor Sensini and more recently Czech defender Marek Jankulovski, Chilean midfielder Davide Pizarro and Ghana's Stephane Appiah and Sully Muntari have all established themselves in Italy, thanks to Udinese.
Given the club's extensive scouting system, players like the above are usually picked up relatively cheaply. For Udinese, the trick is to sell them off well if and when, like the above mentioned, they make the grade. A club like Udinese, with a relatively modest budget, cannot afford either to refuse million dollar transfer deals or to afford their best players million dollar salaries.
In their attempt to protect themselves with regard to Iaquinta, however, Udinese appear to have gone down the road of self-inflicted damages. Knowing their promising striker has attracted the interest of clubs like AC Milan, Inter Milan, Juventus and Barcelona, Udinese want Iaquinta to extend his current contract (expiry date June 2007) by a couple of years.
Only by so doing, claim the club, can they avoid the risk of losing the player, if not on a free transfer (in the summer of 2007) then at a Fifa-established transfer fee that does not reflect his true market value, next summer. Udinese, too, know all too well that under Fifa regulations, Iaquinta can unilaterally break his contract next summer because he will have completed three years with the club.
If the contract is not terminated by mutual consent, it is at this point that Fifa may be called on to establish a "nominal" transfer fee - precisely the sequence of events Udinese want to avoid.
For their part, the player and his agent Sergio Berti, have claimed that Udinese blocked a possible sale to Fiorentina this summer by putting a €15 million price tag on his head when the Florence club were offering only 10 million.
The differences between the player and the club manifested itself last week when the two parties failed to agree the terms of a new contract. Perhaps by way of provocation, Iaquinta and his agent had asked for a contract worth an annual 1.2 million, or a 120 per cent hike on his current 0.5 million annual salary. Furthermore, Iaquinta knows all too well that Udinese have imposed their own salary cap of 600,000 on their players.
Thus it was that, on the eve of a midweek tie against Juventus, Iaquinta was dropped from the first team squad. Since then, he has remained in footballing limbo, training with the first team but missing the weekend game away to Reggina and tonight's Champions League tie.
In the meantime, without Iaquinta, Udinese have lost to Juventus and Reggina and could be in difficulty against Barcelona tonight. How many more defeats will it take for the two parties to find an accord?
