The Official Azzurri thread 2

[Lombardiamia]

[tonykart]

Giovinco's size is definitely not a plus, but he has enough skill to become a top tier player similar to Ribery, Aguero or Messi. The key is that Giovinco must be used on the flank and must have targets to pass to.

The game is getting more and more pussified anyways with all the diving and crying. I think a player's size is less and less of an issue. It's not like players like Ronaldo, Ozil, or Robinho use their size to their advantage.

[p_maldini_3]

[Zoff82]

[Messinterista]

[maro]

[Lombardiamia]

1 mistake in a game can always happen to anyone without the need to cry out loud for it. Up till now, I dont remember a match in which the referee was seen as one sided, with more than one episode going in the same direction. 2002 was totally different, since the same team (which 'coincidently' were also the WC hosts..) benefitted from a huge amount of one sided decisions in at least 2 consecutive matches. Those sort of matches can make you suspicious...whereas what we're seeing today, at least what we've seen till today, were one-offs mistakes. No comparison IMO.

[maro]

I agree, Lomba - though I was surprised by how badly the linesman got it wrong on Tevez's goal last night. The fact that Tevez was standing still waiting for the ball while the two defenders were desperately scrambling to get back to him surely made it fairly obvious even if the linesman wasn't quite in line or was somehow obstructed. For me, that was a very poor decision to get wrong, but it was still only one decision.

[Lombardiamia]

[Carlo Romano]

There's more than just a little repetition creeping in, Guys...

Those of us with sense have been moaning for years now about the amount of stranieri in Serie A. Initially the Champions League created a monster whereby clubs considered they couldn't afford the luxury of waiting to develop their primavere when it became all too easy to import ready made stars. What then considerably worsened the situation was when big business all too conveniently took notice of not just football related opportunities to exploit within the CL, all of which has since led to the detriment of many countries' national teams, though not so obviously in Italy until now...

How many of us remember Berlusconi saying in the early days of the CL that the day would come when it replaced national teams as football's main attraction and he wasn't complaining by any means, in fact he welcomed it!

But we know all this, just as we also know grass will grow quicker than Uefa acting on the "6 & 5" limitation. The FIGC is going to have to somehow find a typically Italian compromise, just as was done back in the 1990's when the limit of foreigners was raised from three to four, which if we recall, in Italy meant though a club was within its legal rights to own four stranieri, the FIGC then had the brains to insist clubs never actually fielded more than three at a time. Left to me, I'd return today to the three foreigners rule in total but that situation will never happen again, more's the pity, as the advantages were there for all to see in terms of having both a strong league and national team.


Giovinco? He reminds me of Benito Carbone and he will probably go down the same road in his senior career. The tragedy of that is, despite his skills he can be muscled out of situations by a good defender with enough nous to not even give away a free kick. When Giovinco first broke on to the scene around three years ago I said the boy needed to spend serious body building time in the gym, something he hasn't noticeably done. To emphasise my point, Miccoli wouldn't be pushed around yet their heights aren't so different!


We can debate Prandelli's merits or lack thereof until we are blue in the face. We will know if he has what it takes soon enough. Certainly we cannot condemn the man because Fiorentina hadn't the squad to fight on three fronts last season. My criticism of him is that the Viola players ought not to have seen their season degenerate into freefall after their CL campaign was shot to hell, because even if we make allowances for the unrest within the club when Andrea Della Valle resigned as chairman, it was still Prandelli's job to keep locker room morale up, and though I won't at this point question his tactics, others have and with a vengeance.

Mitigating circs or not in Firenze, he has the seeds in place to improve upon Lippi's last two years with both upcoming young talent and others who were for whatever reason not given a fair crack of the whip. I will stick by my opinion that Prandelli will certainly improve upon la nostra nazionale as it currently is, and that there's no reason to think we shouldn't acquit ourselves well enough at Euro 2012. But again I must state my doubts as to his being a big winner...

[maro]

It's amazing how the effect of this long-term development has so suddenly come to be felt in the past four years.

[Lombardiamia]

Carlo, IMO that 6+5 rule will never come in effect, cause it clearly violates Eu rules, which go far beyond any footballing need. It is discriminatory on foreigners and since EU territory is to be considered as 1 whole big country in concept, you cant automatically refuse EU people from doing their trade in any given country.
IMO, the ways to go are 2. One is the financial controls with are to be implemented by UEFA on clubs, which will automatically impose clubs to rely on their youth system (note that any funds invested by a club for buying cantera/primavera players, will not be added to the club's yearly expenditure, and will therefore not need a bigger income for the club to replenish that loss). This way, big clubs will automatically have to invest in their youth system.
Second way to go, unfortunately for the romantic of this sport, is the integration of the Oriundi. If one takes this Germany as a prime example to follow, then the Oriundi HAVE to be a primary source for the nation. It will be difficult to accept, but that is the way to go, unfortunately.

[Carlo Romano]

Professore, your sarcasm!

It was thought by some that because of what we achieved in Berlin when added to Milan and Juve's CL exploits, it left no room at all for concern within il calcio over the past several years.

The stats however speak to the contrary if that is a permissable grammatical error when we look at the many European successes Italian clubs had back in the 1990's, by comparison to the 2000's.

Perhaps it suited some people to act like ostriches whereas some others couldn't see the obvious. Either way it's been an accident waiting to happen for too long...

[maro]

Carlo, I just think the Azzurri won last time round because the side had some absolutely top-class players and, added to that, one or two others played at an unfeasibly high level: Buffoon, Pirlo, Cannavaro for the first bracket, Grosso, Gattuso, Materazzi for the second, say. And, of course, you could add Zambrotta and Totti to the first list, I suspect (one can only wonder whether with Totti fully fit Italy might not have won it a bit more comfortably).

The comparison, surely, is that half of those players are still around and in their decline and that there isn't quite the quality coming in behind them because a number of those were once in a generation players. Perhaps Marchisio, Aquilani, Montolivo, Criscito, Pazzini and, say, Balotelli and Cassano and Rossi will all be world-class players in 4 years time, but Cannavaro in his pomp, and Pirlo and Totti are players of the absolutely highest class. I don't know my Azzurri history well enough to determine this, but I should have thought there have been plenty of generations of Italian sides who've not had quality of that kind within their ranks even when Serie A was stacked with Italian players.

[Carlo Romano]

Lomba, it might seem an absurd example to make but irrespective of EEC regulations, a "typically Italian" compromise along the lines of simply not buying stranieri is breaking no rules unless a player actually asks a club for employment and is refused on the grounds he is a foreigner.

Yes, the oriundi option is another, and possibly a viable one though initially resistance to such a suggestion will be high. In the meantime I'd rather see us at least try to bring through some of our own youth players instead of bowing to the pressure of the Champions and Europa Leagues, tempting though it is to just import ready made stars!

[Lombardiamia]

We both know that such an agreement will never come into effect Carlo, as Italian clubs are suffering from lack of introits when compared to our competitors. Clubs like Inter, Milan, Juve or Roma will never pay 1M more for a player who is Italian, rather than an equivalent foreign player. It is also a fact that for some strange reason, Italian players tendentially always cost higher than most SA's.

[Carlo Romano]

Tom, you don't have to have a long term knowledge to think as you correctly do that certain events are one-off and that others go in cycles. In terms of replacing true quality we have suffered something of the same problem after 1970, 1982, 1990, and now. When we look at the obvious class of the present Argentina side we see just how much of a gap in ability there is between our Azzurri and el biancoceleste which is why they and not we are still competing for this particular Mondiale maledetto!

Strangely enough I can see wisdom in both the fact that we can be naturally lucky in this life and that we can also induce that luck by making our own. In the latter case not always by following the logical route!

From failure in 1966, the nucleus of that side plus a new coach had the quality to win Euro 1968 then finish runners-up to the best ever Brasil side in 1970. But you don't replace talent like Mazzola, Riva, Rivera etc just like that so we bombed in 1974. Where we got lucky was in getting Bearzot who had to rebuild the team then had the courage to select young Paolo Rossi in 1978 and play him with Bettega when everyone screamed at him to play Graziani. We did better than was expected and came fourth in Argentina '78 and fourth in Euro 1980 because along with his rebuild, he also had the guts to do what Italian coaches didn't in those days, made attack the priority over defence.

The parallel with Lippi in terms of he should have been content to quit while ahead came after his 1982 World Cup win when we didn't even qualify for Euro 1984, then had a poor Mexico 1986.

On the subject of a one-off and trying to make one's own luck, even the best laid plans as they say can fail. It will never happen again unfortunately that a man like Azeglio Vicini will have the opportunity to bring virtually an entire team through U-21 level and groom those players for the express purpose of winning football's greatest prize, the World Cup, using the European Championships on the way as a senior level rehearsal. Yet from 1986-1991 this guy damn near brought it off.

But what talent he had at his disposal and not only that, they functioned like a club side who knew each other well, something that's worth its weight in gold. Zenga, De Agostini, De Napoli, Ferri, Bergomi, Baresi, Giannini, Vialli, Mancini, Baggio, Ancelotti, etc. Although at the time not one of them was a household name outside Italian communities, they had that certain indefinable quality "it," and in abundance...probably my favourite Azzurri squad though as we know, it was flawed by a slight lack of self belief!

I still say Arrigo Sacchi got to the final of USA '94 as much as by reaping the benefit of a lot of Vicini's work as anything he himself did, and by having Italy's last winner of the World's Best player award, Roby Baggio. Now if that isn't luck, I don't know what is! We got a much clearer image of Sacchi's true ability during Euro '96...

But yes, I must again agree, to have a team packed with exceptional talent, true fuoriclasse stars doesn't happen very often... yet I've seen it three times in my life, 1970, 1982, and 2006. I can't include 1994 because though again there was undeniable talent, we saw for ourselves how much that group relied on Baggio, much to the chagrin of the coach who had a preference for a formation which did not include a "fantasista" and which he grudgingly included in his selection.

But that is the past. Now we have to wonder just where Prandelli will take us.

[RomaShield27]

I have to say I'm a bit surprised by the feeling of doubt toward Prandelli. For me, I think the Prandelli era will be a successful one for the Azzurri in the long run and I think he enters the Azzurri fold at a great time for such a young and aspiring manager. Italy is at its all time low, having made a laughing stock out of themselves on the world stage and suffering a humiliating far worse then even the biggest of critics of Lippi could of imagined, and several big names are (finally) retiring or gone from the international fold, and so change is needed, a new era has to be introduced. So step forward Prandelli, a very good young manager who done a good job at Fiorentina (despite things clearly not being right toward the end, as Carlo said). It is up to him, now, he has to rebuild the Azzurri and restore them to being a major international force. It won't happen overnight, of course, it will take a couple of years or longer, even, before they are there, but I firmly believe the young talent is there in Italy at the moment and it just needs to introduced and built upon slowly but surely.

[danni_ragazzo]

It seems like Ranieri is afflicted by the same desease as Lippi.....that he cannot recognize talent when it is right in front of him:

Giovinco had this to say:

“In the last two years, which in my opinion I deserved to play, it hasn't gone this way. I have lost two seasons, but I don't have any regrets.
“This year has been full of injuries for me, but I don't believe that has anything to do with the many appearances on the bench. I wouldn't have played anyway.

http://www.football-italia.net/jun09i.html

[maro]

Or perhaps they recognise raw and immature talent when it's right in front of them?