The Official Azzurri thread 2

[p_maldini_3]

*assuming that motta is already in the line up.

[Bagg10]

Prandelli needs to stop playing Balotelli as a lone-striker and hoping he scores on the counter.

[tonykart]

i think the 4-1-4-1 has been working fine. we just didn't take Costa Rica seriously. The real problem came with Prandelli subbing on players who didn't deserve to even be on the team. Cerci, Insigne, Parolo are very adorable players and Insigne may even be worthy of the NT someday, but Rossi, El Sharaway and Criscito should have been on this team.

If we are going to win this, we need to lock down that midfield and give Pirlo some space. I prefer Motta to Verratti against teams like England and Uruguay...

Is De Sciglio healthy yet?

[Bagg10]

El Shaarawy? really?

[Zoff82]

That's the end of this thread. There seems to be a deeper problem behind Prandelli's resignation. Any clarification on this since I know some of you are really in to this kind of thing? He mentioned verbal abuse and being treated like a political party, etc? I can't seem to find anything on the internet.

[tonykart]

El Sharawy, Diamanti, Rossi, Criscito, Astori, Marchetti, De Sanctis.... what were Insigne, Parolo, Immobile, Cerci, Paletta doing on this team?

Why was Cassano (our most talented and effective forward by a long shot) not a starter?

I do blame the referee for getting paid off or protecting himself from a death threat for that ridiculous red card. That made a complete joke out of the whole game.

I don't care about the biting. If I was Chiellini you can bet your ass my reaction wouldn't have been to get up and whine to the principal's office. Just punch the little faggot in the face and move on with your life.

This sport is a giant joke filled with unnecessary guilt, dirty referees and transvestite faggots (we call them soccer or football players).

[Zoff82]

Cassano wasn't a started because of all those missed passes in the Costa Rica game which continued into the Uruguay game. Pushing the ball forward only for the defender to out pace him & clear it out. He couldn't hold on to the ball. His legacy will always be that of a good player but amounted to crap with the Italy shirt. He'll be remembered for being a talented but lazy asshole & so will Balo. Italy won without that type of player & they will win again. All those guys you've mentioned tony... Are all just as inexperienced, just as bad. I'll give them a very slight, slight edge vs the players Prandelli took. He did a few small things to bring his vision to La Nazionale but sacrificed it with his hypocrisy. Could you imagine if he left Balo at home??

[tonykart]

You can't leave Balo and Cassano home... they got us to the finals of Euros... I don't see the problem. Cassano is not a sub.

Diamanti should have been on the roster.

I can't argue that El Sharawy or Rossi are better options... that is just based on gut feeling and baseline talent. In Rossi's case... he has been there before.

[RomaShield27]

By John Foot / 25 June 2014, 4.51pm BST

https://theconversation.com/balotelli-i ... isis-28467

It started with a bang, but it ended with a whisper, a scandal, two immediate resignations (the manager and the head of the football federation), and a bite that shook the world.

Italy’s 2014 World Cup campaign moved from a sense of triumph to one of total disaster in just a few days. After a sparkling opening against England, with a masterclass from the bearded maestro, Andrea Pirlo, the following two matches saw Italy play some of the worst football in their history.

They appeared to have been victims of “reverse doping”, moving at walking pace, unable to perform simple tasks such as passing the ball to each other, shooting on goal or tracking back in defence. There were few crunching tackles, no counter-attacks, and an enormous amount of huffing and puffing with no end product whatsoever.

Italy failed to trouble the scorers in those two, terrible games, and their failure to gain even one more point meant that they were out – eliminated at the group stage for the second World Cup in a row, against a mediocre Uruguayan team and the upstart minnows of Costa Rica.

The fallout was brutal. Cesare Prandelli, the man who had taken Italy to the final of the European championships just two years ago, fell on his sword. He was swiftly followed (to widespread relief) by the President of Italy’s Football Federation, Giancarlo Abete.

There were calls for Prandelli to reconsider, but he said his decision was irrevocable. Prandelli took responsibility for what had happened, and there was little doubt that he – and many of his players – had crumbled under pressure. His tactical choices were confused and confusing, and the constant changes in personnel did little to change things. His risky decision to choose a maverick genius like Antonio Cassano backfired badly, and his faith in Mario Balotelli was not repaid. Prandelli has been a superb manager, but when the going got tough, he was all over the place.

Balotelli the scapegoat

Swiftly, the Italian press and public looked for scapegoats. There was an obvious candidate. Despite scoring the winning goal in Italy’s only victory, Balotelli himself took most of the flak. In part, of course, this is because he is black. All his mistakes are magnified because of the symbolic power of his (unchosen) role as a representative – the most visible and famous representative – of a new generation of black Italians, sons and daughters of those 5m foreign immigrants who have lived, worked and settled in Italy since the late 1980s.

But there were other factors at work here. Club loyalties have always been important in Italian football – crucial parts of the identities of millions of ordinary Italian people. One of the first things you find out about people when you meet them for the first time is which footballing category they fall into – juventino, interista, milanista and so on.

In the past, these loyalties have been secondary to those of support for the national team. La nazionale has stood above club and local rivalries. Yet, in the fallout from 2014, I have detected a shift in emphasis. Balotelli is scapegoated because he is black, but also because of his club and his footballing past. Juve fans hate Balotelli as a symbol of the Inter victories after the calciopoli scandals, which they believe were a conspiracy organised in part by Inter managers and others. Inter fans don’t like Balotelli, of course, because he eventually joined their closest rivals – the team he supports – AC Milan.

There are around 11m juventini in Italy, and something like 5m interisti (who knows what the real figures are?). That’s 16m fans. And none of them likes Balotelli very much. In this World Cup, club loyalties outweighed those linked to national identity – especially in the fallout of one of the worst defeats in Italian footballing history – that against Costa Rica (the only comparable defeat was that against North Korea, in 1966, which led to tomatoes being thrown at the team on their return to Italy, and a huge debate which went on for months).

Soul-searching begins

Is this a turning point? Are club loyalties and identities now so strong that they colour everything, dominating discussion of how La Nazionale has performed? I can also see this tendency creeping into the way England are seen. Is club football beginning to erode the power of the World Cup altogether? After all, if you are England, the World Cup lasts for two games every four years (in the worst case scenario) and is therefore profoundly unsatisfying for any kind of fan.

Italy’s defeat will lead to further soul-searching about the deep structural problems at the heart of their footballing system. The day after the defeat against Uruguay, Ciro Esposito, a Napoli fan who had been shot on his way to the Italian cup final in Rome on May 3 by a neo-fascist Roma ultra (hard-core fan), died in hospital.


Lost and leaderless. Paolo Aguilar/EPA
Click to enlarge
Italy is blighted by crumbling, uneconomic and horrible stadiums, dominated (inside the ground) by organised and often violent fans who hold the clubs to ransom. A recent scandal saw hundreds of players, middle-men and others involved in betting scams, but was quickly swept under the carpet. Politics is everywhere, and not in a good way. No significant investment has happened since the 1990 World Cup, and that was pretty disastrous, with some of the stadiums built at that time having already been demolished.

On the field, we saw the last of the great playmaker Andrea Pirlo. But even he was part of the problem. As other teams cut out his passing outlets, he dropped deeper and deeper to collect the ball. It was taking Italy what seemed like hours to even get to the halfway line. One perfect pass set up a chance for Balotelli in the Costa Rica game, but he hardly saw the ball for the rest of that match. Pirlo’s centrality had become a millstone from which Italy could not free itself.

There was no plan B. By the end, there wasn’t really a plan A anymore. The team should be grateful to Suárez’s fangs for deflecting attention from a collapse which was as unexpected as it was extraordinary. As the post-Prandelli era presumably begins (unless he reconsiders) it will take much more than a change of manager to put this mess into some kind of order.

[tonykart]

terrible article. made few decent points.

Prandelli is to blame for the loss to Costa Rica. He is not to blame for the loss against Uruguay. That was a game that was lost by the referee.

Any modern day team would have been distracted by being bit. These modern players are shemales who would rather whine and cry than take matters into their own hands. They would rather get a totally cute hair style with zig zags and colory butterfly tattoos!

Italy's future looks grim. Our young talent is non-existent or in the form of midgets.

[Zoff82]

Makes you wonder if Montolivo' was that important. Hilarious quote on the midgets lol.

[p_maldini_3]

balotelli, while being a complete douche, is getting too much flak.

prandelli should get more blame. he had no impact subs, no speedy forwards. he never played pirlo and verratti together prior to the world cup. and he wasted a squad number on cassano, a player who wouldn't last more than 30 minutes in the brazilian heat, when was the last time an italian number 10 played so little?

prandelli prepared well for the past 4 years, but when it came down to the final test, he fucked up big time.

[juventino_italiano]

[maro]

I would say that Balotelli is getting stick by and large for things behind the scenes and off the pitch - about which we only get vague whispers.

[maro]

Nazionale, Bonucci caccia Balotelli dallo spogliatoio. “Imbecille, esci e stai zitto”. Rissa sfiorata con De Rossi
Ecco i primi retroscena di cosa è successo, nello spogliatoio, all'intervallo di Italia-Uruguay.

News Calcio

di Redazione 26 giugno 2014 | 12.24 |

Cominciano ad emergere i primi, deprimenti retroscena sull’intervallo di Italia-Uruguay. Mario Balotelli non avrebbe preso bene la decisione di Cesare Prandelli di sostituirlo. Come svela Il Secolo XIX, l’attaccante avrebbe borbottato qualcosa ma sarebbe stato prima ripreso dai senatori e poi fisicamente cacciato dallo spogliatoio da Leonardo Bonucci, che lo avrebbe apostrofato in questo modo: “Imbecille, esci di qui e stai zitto”. Bonucci avrebbe solo anticipato Daniele De Rossi, che si sarebbe avvicinato a Balotelli per un confronto meno amichevole.

[maro]

Nazionale, I senatori non sopportavano lo spirito vacanziero di Insigne e Cassano in Brasile
Spogliatoio spaccato anche per questi motivi

La Gazzetta dello Sport

di Redazione 27 giugno 2014 | 10.31 |

La Gazzetta dello Sport riporta alcuni retroscena sulle spaccature all’interno dello spogliatoio della Nazionale italiana:

“Buffon e Chiellini, i primi interlocutori di Prandelli, per tutto il Mondiale hanno fatto presente gli atteggiamenti sbagliati di Cassano e Balotelli: lamentoso il primo, perso nelle sue cose e nelle promesse matrimoniali il secondo. Hanno rimproverato al c.t. l’errore della scelte, l’inadeguatezza di altri convocati. Strigliato da qualche compagno dopo la trasparente comparsata contro Costa Rica, Cerci ha provato ad abbozzare: «Non sarà mica colpa mia?». I vecchi juventini che muoiono su un tackle anche in allenamento non sopportavano lo spirito vacanziero di alcuni ragazzotti (Insigne). Gente come Barzagli e Chiellini è disposta a sputare l’anima e a lasciare la copertina alla stella di turno, purché faccia vincere. Come The Waterboy e Tevez. Ma chi ha vissuto un anno con Tevez e lo ha visto rincorrere i terzini al 90’ non può accettare questo Balotelli che cammina, sbaglia i gol, non vive da squadra e critica pure i compagni che lottano, tanto che martedì Prandelli gli ha sbraitato di smettere e poi lo ha sostituito”.

[Zoff82]

A little late with the articles maro but thanks .....any shot Balo gets his ass whipped into shape by Wenger if the transfer goes through?? I think Pirlo earned his "indispensable" status. I agree with all points p_maldini made. JI, I don't believe any of those players would've made a huge difference. I've been telling everyone Italy looked dull and scared to take risks. They played with no grit, no balls and no toughness. The whole team literally shit in their pants. The focus wasn't there.... you didn't see it. It was a collective clusterfuck. If the rumors are true....prepare a Mancini Era thread. On that note, I won't be watching lol

[DCGweez]

You're not Italian Maro. What do you know?

[DCGweez]

Actually, who am I to judge? I don't live in New Jersey or deliver pepperoni pizzas.

Zoff can we get a ruling?

[Zoff82]

Hey...I ask the questions around here.

Ooooohhhh...you egging me on?? Check the dates we joined buddy. I'm an original around these parts. I don't spend nearly as much time as you do but you have a job to do, I guess. It is a privilege to get into a spat with me. A ping pong match of insults & snide comments is 1 you would lose. You sir, are beneath a legend such as myself

I always value maro's opinion. I value anyone's opinion but to say "eh, who cares?" or "look at the Italians, everyone loses their shit over a bad tournament" proves to me you have no emotional investment in what probably is Italy's pride.