Article 6 — Euro 08 & South Africa 10
After the highest of high of 2006, the decline of the Italian national team began. The conveyer belt of young Italian talent from as far back as 1988 was slowing down, almost grinding to a halt. Alessandro Nesta and Francesco Totti had retired after the glory of 2006. Most of the other mainstays from 2006 kept their place in the team.
There was a new manager at the helm as well, Marcello Lippi chose not to renew his contract after winning the World Cup. Legendary Milan winger Roberto Donadoni, who had represented Italy at Euro 88, Italia 90, USA 94 and Euro 96 was the new manager. The newly crowned World Champions made a shaky start to the qualifiers, they drew and lost their first 2 qualifiers, the defeat coming in a rematch of the 2006 World Cup final against France in Paris.
The rest of the qualifiers was concluded in typically efficient Italian fashion, doing the bare minimum to win games and qualify top of the group ahead of France. The squad for Euro 2008 had surviving members from the 2006 squad and added to it were some players in their early to mid-20s like Fabio Quagliarella, Marco Boriello, Alberto Aquilani, Giorgio Chiellini and Alessandro Gamberini. Antonio Cassano and Christian Panucci, at the grand old age of 35 years old, made a return to the squad. There was also space for late bloomer, Antonio Di Natale. Captain Fabio Cannavaro missed out due to an injury he picked up during training before the tournament.
Italy was in for a rude shock as they were blitzed 3–0 by Holland in the first match. The older Italian team had no answer to the speed and verve of the Dutch’s counter-attacks for the 2nd and 3rd goals. In the 2nd game against Romania, Italy needed a crucial save by Gianluigi Buffon from Adrian Mutu’s penalty to salvage a draw. That meant to qualify, Italy went into the final game needing to beat France and for a favour from already-qualified Holland to beat or draw against Romania.
France had a similar record to Italy at this stage, drawing their first match against Romania 0–0 before being hammered by Holland 1–4. Like Italy, they needed to win to qualify. This was to be a final on its own between two teams that looked past their best, in transition between star players in their 30s and a new generation attempting to replace the previous one but without the right quality.
Italy played their best in the tournament, the first time in a long time, for a comfortable 2–0 win over 10 men France. It was a sweet win which saw Italy qualify for the quarter-final alongside Holland, eliminating rivals France in that process. The qualification to the quarter-final came at a cost though as Italy lost Andrea Pirlo and Gennaro Gattuso through suspension.
Italy played against eventual champions, Spain in the quarter-final and spent 120 minutes, sitting back and soaking the pressure. Without Pirlo, Italy found it tough to gain any control of the ball in midfield as Spain held on to possession expertly for almost the entire chunk of the 120 minutes. However, Spain couldn’t find a way past Buffon and Italy’s defence was typically tough to breakdown. The match went to a penalty shootout. Italy couldn’t replicate the penalty shootout conversion rate from 2 years before as one of the successful converters, Daniele De Rossi missed as did Antonio Di Natale. Both penalties were saved by Iker Casillas while Buffon could only keep Spain’s Dani Guiza’s penalty out. Spain won 4–2 to eliminate Italy from the quarter-final of Euro 08.
In truth, Italy didn’t deserve to beat Spain in the quarter-final and would have been lucky if they had won the penalty shootout. Throughout the tournament, the team didn’t play well and you could see that age was catching up on some of the key players from 2006, only Buffon and Pirlo could emerge from the tournament with their reputation intact. Neither Alessandro Del Piero, Cassano or Di Natale could provide any form of creativity or flair and Luca Toni was profligate in his finishing, unlike the form that he was showing for his club side, Bayern Munich.
Roberto Donadoni’s time in-charge of Italy was up at the end of their adventure in 2008. Marcello Lippi was re-appointed to take charge of Italy’s defence of the World Cup in 2010. There was no problem in the qualifiers once again however, the experience in the Confederations Cup 2009 was probably a fair reflection of where the squad stood.
Italy won the first match against USA before losing the next 2 against African champions, Egypt and a heavy defeat against 5 times World Champions, Brazil. The team was struggling, relying heavily on the aged legs of the heroes of 2006 without many high-quality young talents coming through to take over the mantle from the veterans. One young talent that was a bright spark in the Confederations Cup was Giuseppe Rossi.
However, surprisingly, Lippi overlooked Rossi when he selected the squad for World Cup 2010. There was also no space for Alessandro Del Piero, Toni, Fabio Grosso and Marco Materazzi in the squad owing to the decline in form of some of these players and the injury troubles. Inter had just been crowned champions of Europe and was the first Italian club to complete the Treble but there was no Inter player that was called up for Italy largely because the first eleven was filled with foreigners.
Precarious Inter youngster Mario Balotelli was also ignored from selection due to doubts over his character and temperament. Antonio Cassano was also missing from the selection despite his good form for Sampdoria due to the same reason. Lippi selected a few young 20 somethings in the form of Riccardo Montolivo, Giampaolo Pazzini, Leonardo Bonucci, Claudio Marchisio, Domenico Criscito and Simone Pepe.
Italy was drawn in a fairly easy group with Paraguay, New Zealand and Slovakia. However, they contrived to draw the first 2 games against Paraguay and New Zealand. They needed to beat Slovakia to avoid an embarrassing exit but Italy was embarrassingly bundled out of the tournament in the group stage, losing 3–2 and finishing bottom of a group that on paper looked easy to navigate.
As in 2008, Italy deserved the early elimination. They played poorly in all 3 games and yet again they deeply missed the creative talent of Andrea Pirlo who missed all 3 games through injury. Buffon was also missing from the 2nd game onwards through injury.
There was little Lippi could do with the quality of the players available to him. While he deserved praise for creating a tight-knight group of players in 2006, selecting strong characters and players that could bond as a unit, he deserved the criticism for ignoring one of the brightest talents emerging for Italy in Rossi. For a manager with the experience of Lippi, surely he had something about him to manage the mercurial and temperamental talent of Balotelli and Cassano at a time when Italy was desperately short on quality talent.
This stubbornness to only include players that are good guys and yes men for him, is a flaw in his personality as I found out from his time at Inter.
