Pizarro FINALLY Trains And Gets the No.14 Shirt

By: Andy | July 24th, 2007

With the Copa America getting in the way it took until today for Peruvian International Claudio Pizarro to be unveiled as a Chelsea player and manager Jose Mourinho presented Pizarro the No.14 shirt which had belonged to Geremi who has now gone off to ply his footballing trade with Newcastle United.

Pizarro trained for the first time today with his new team mates before they flew off to Holland to face Feyenoord tomorrow (Wednesday) in the De Kuip Stadium in Rotterdam. The game kicks off 6pm UK time and look out for score updates as I intend to LIVE blog the game which is being shown exclusively live on Chelsea TV or on the Internet at Chelsea TV online.

Pizarro was signed on a free transfer from Bayern Munich where he spent six years and scored 70 goals from 174 Laeague appearances. Piizarro has also been capped 45 times by Peru.

Attending his first British press conference Pizarro said, “I will try to bring my football, my quality, my experience in Europe and the mix I have with South American football to try to win some titles here.”

Jose said “Pizarro is a very good player and he’s a striker we need. We need a different striker than what we have, different qualities, and also because this season in many, many matches we will play with two pure strikers, so we need him. The question of being a free transfer was just an opportunity to make an easy deal.”

“He knows how to play in a big team, he knows how to play with pressure, he knows how to play and compete with other very good players, he knows how to win, he has the feeling of winning trophies and I’m very, very convinced that he will have success here.”

“He is intelligent, holds the ball well, not the kind of selfish striker who likes to shoot, he likes to move the ball well, he is good in the air and scores goals.”

Pizarro had limited opportunities with Bayern last season and on this subject Jose said, “When a player is in the last year of his contract it is never an easy situation, especially when you feel the player is not going to sign. Normally when a coach ahs to decided between a player who will be with you next season and a player that normally is leaving the club, that’s normal what happened.”

“In Bayern,” Jose continued, “They had Makaay, Pizarro, Santa Cruz, Podolski. We are not speaking about an ordinary group of people, we are speaking about the best players in Europe. I don’t judge a player just on the last year, because I’ve known him for a long time.”

After reading all that I just hope that Jose hasn’t BIG UP Pizarro too much, because as we have seen in the past couple of seasons with Drogba and Sheva taking time to settle in, can Pizarro win over the fans quickly?

Judging by the following words from our latest striker, he seems to be full of confidence. He said “If I get opportunities its up to me to make it difficult to be left out of the side. I know there are lots of players here of excellent quality. I’ve seen that, it was my first training session with the group today, and I can see the quality at first hand.”

On his decision to come to the Premiership and Chelsea Pizarro said, “I was always thinking to come to England. I talked to my friend Owen Hargreaves and he told me he is moving to Manchester, so he told me its very nice here.”

When I talked to the people here I found them very nice. I know they want to win many important things here, and that’s what I want too, so thats why I came here.”

Seems to me he is saying all the right things and if his play matches all the words that have been written today, then we could have a top rate striker on our hands!!!

KTBFFH