Serie A-Player Profile: Domenico Criscito
Criscito is a young full back that plays for the Italian national football team in international football and for Genoa at club football level. Criscito, whose full name is Domenico Criscito, was born in Cercola, Italy. Cercola is located in Southern Italy. Since his childhood, Domenico was serious about adopting football as his profession, his ambitions rose to prominence when his family moved to Northern Italy when he was just thirteen years old.
His first professional club was Genoa, for whom he made his first appearance in Italian football’s second division also known as Serie B in June of 2003. Criscito was just sixteen years old when he made his debut for Genoa. During the summer transfer window which preceded the 2004-2005 season, Genoa sold fifty percent of his contract to Juventus F.C, one of the most famous Italian clubs in history of football.
The deal amounted to around one million Euros which Juventus paid to Genoa. As a part of the agreement, Francesco Volpe also joined Genoa from Juventus. Criscito played for Juventus’s youth team along with his Italian Under-21 team mates Claudio Marchisio, Sebastian Giovinco and Paolo De Ceglie. In doing so the young Italian defender won the 2006 Italian football’s youth championship. In the 2006-2007 season, Criscito returned to his old club Genoa and his consistent performances helped him cement his place in the club’s starting line up. Soon the Italian teenager became one of Serie B’s best defenders.
In the January transfer window of the 2006-2007 season, Juventus made a move for the rest of Criscito’s contract and bought it for around eight million Euros. In doing so, the Italian defender became contracted with Juventus till the summer of 2011. His first team debut for Juventus came on August 25th, 2007 in their Serie A come back game against Livorno. Juventus won the match eventually by five goals to one.
However, the rest of his season did not go according to plan as he came under severe criticism when Juventus’s rivals Roma’s captain Francesco Totti scored twice in six minutes of their local Serie A encounter. In the above stated match, Criscito was substituted at the half way mark because of his weary performance. Another problem that Domenico faced at Juventus was competition for a first team berth; he had to compete with Nicola Lengrottaglie and Giorgio Chiellini for the left back spot in the starting line up; a contest in which he often finished as third best.
Criscito soon became frustrated due to lack of first team opportunities at Juventus and he opted for a return loan spell at Genoa in the opening week of the January transfer window of 2006-2007 season. In the summer of 2008, the youthful Italian defender was again sent on loan to Genoa and in February of 2009, he scored his first goal for the Ligurian club in a match against Palermo.
Genoa were impressed by his displays yet again and soon contacted Juventus for a co-ownership of the Italian footballer. Juventus agreed to a deal which mimicked their earlier contractual agreement with Genoa. Before the 2009-2010 season started, Genoa and Juventus agreed to share Criscito’s playing contract. His performances since then for Genoa have been quite exceptional; his displays earned him a spot in Italy’s FIFA World Cup Squad for the 2010 tournament held in South Africa.
He played for his national team in all their group stage matches namely against New Zealand, Paraguay and Slovakia. Italy disappointingly exited the 2010 FIFA World Cup after failing to win any of their group stage matches.
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