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Last night i sat and watched Match of the day in my bedroom on which they showed the highlights of Manchester City vs. Chelsea at the City of Manchester stadium a game where City went on to win 1-0 which afterwards prompted Gary Linkers opening gambit to be "a typical Italian game of football, very defensive and not wanting to give anything away" or words to that effect

How long will these old fashioned prejudices be carried on for? It now seems to be an easy thing to say for all "pundits" when talking about Calcio, if these masters of the game even cared to sit down and do a little research before speaking they would realise that Calcio is no longer all defence, catenaccio and tactical master classes.

Chelsea lined up with a 4-3-3 formation, a formation used often by those total football crazy Dutch, yes i know very Italian and defensive! and Man City with a 4-5-1, probably because they did not want to sacrifice the midfield as they knew that’s where the game would be won or lost for them, not negative just smart tactics from Mancini i feel.

If we look away from the Premiershit and to our very own Serie A we will see that many teams do not line up with the 5-4-1 formation and grind out nil-nil after nil-nil, Udinese and Genoa been two who come straight to my mind who try to play an open attractive brand of football lining up with the audacity to start a 3-4-3 formation, something you rarely see in the modern day game to my knowledge, Milan lining up with the 4-3-3 formation with a plethora of Brazilian samba stars throughout the team then we have Inter who with the help of Jose Mourinho went on to win the treble last season usually lining up again with a 4-3-3 formation with a front line of Eto'o, Pandev and Milito that’s not a team who look like they are going to play for the draw, Roma with their 4-2-3-1 Formation when all players are fit and healthy signals intent to go out and win games granted with varying results but the intent is ...

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