It might have taken some time, with David Moyes being careful with the striker at first, but West Ham United’s signing of Gianluca Scamacca appears to be starting to pay off.
The forward has now scored six goals for the Hammers this season, and is finally a regular starter at the London Stadium, finding the back of the net in his last two Premier League games against Wolves and Fulham.
Add to that his four goals in the Conference League, and he is tied with the other most prolific Italian striker this season, Lazio’s Ciro Immobile.
Unlike his compatriot, however, Scamacca is performing in a new club, whom he joined quite late in the summer after West Ham paid Sassuolo around £32m for his services.
He signed a five-year contract with the Hammers, with an option for a further year, and appears to be betting on himself long-term to be a success in London going forward.
This mentality, instead of staying quite comfortably in his home country, is something that has impressed Gazzetta dello Sport’s Gianfranco Teotino, who wrote a column on why the 23-year-old is a ‘good example’ for others.
Comparing the West Ham striker’s stats with those of Ciro Immobile, he writes: ‘Not bad for someone who arrived in England almost at the end of pre-season, slowed down between the end of August and the beginning of September by a physical problem and struggling with internal competition from Michail Antonio’.
That’s all ‘despite the cliché according to which it takes a long time to adapt to the intense football of the Premier League’, which is ‘excellent news’ for Roberto Mancini, who has been complaining about ‘the lack of international, but also domestic, experience of the best young Italians’.
Teotino then goes onto add that most Italian footballers are ‘big babies’, who rarely leave their home country, using the example of how few there are in the Premier League, with just four other than Scamacca, in Angelo Ogbonna, Emerson Palmieri, new Leeds signing Wilfried Gnonto and Chelsea’s Jorginho.
The same applies for La Liga, where there is only one, Luiz Felipe, followed by four in the Bundesliga and four in Ligue 1.
This is why Scamacca is ‘an example to follow’, as he has spread his wings elsewhere in order to further his career, unlike the other ‘big babies who remain at home even if there is less and less space for them in Italian teams’.
