It seems like this scared play without killer instinct has infected Italian teams, someone needs to break the cycle. There seems to be talent in the pipeline so I don’t think this is gonna go on forever but Serie A needs to incentivize like Serie B did with straight up money. The incentive for next season isn’t enough but should have some of these teams picking more Italians.
You can tell Chivu has been in Italy too long when he decides to turnover the squad in a CL playoff because he has …. Lecce away this Saturday. You know there was a point where it looked Italian club teams in Europe turned a corner. But this year flushed it all down the toilet
Oh yes. The match of 1994 when Norway somehow felt aggrieved that they had a numerical advantage for 70 Minutes and lost. They can go take another lap.
Watch Bastoni against this shit team. Tell me if you think he's good enough to start for Gli Azzurri. He gives too much space on the first goal and then on the third goal he's gets caught being indecisive. He's about to step up and instead steps back but TWO guys get in behind him for the easy goal. Just bad fundamental defending.
Italy beat Norway in 1994 1-0! GK Pagliuca got a red card forcing Arrigo Sacchi to remove a field player to put Marchegiani in goal. The player who came out was Roberto Baggio who at that point said Sacchi was crazy,
Italian managers always revert to their priors and have no capacity to ********ing learn anything. I’ll say it again, the over emphasis on tactics is ensuring we continue to circle the drain. You cannot control every ********ing detail or streamline every players decision making at this level. You spend countless hours in a week drilling plays and then your shit gets pushed in by these Dutch and Belgian sides that come out you at 250km/hr trying to take your head off. Small clubs also like Bodo that are worth 500 million less than you on the paper, outplay you with the simple instruction of “Play hard. Score more goals”. No one typifies this more than Conte who would be the best coach in the world if he only had to play one game a week. A week to prepare and strategize and he’s great. But throw in that big midweek game and everything crumbles. He can’t manage the squad. He runs them too hard in training. He can’t properly game plan. He goes into the games too overcautious trying above all “not to los. And then we get pumped 6 goals by PSV. Time gives perspective but we can say now that Gasperini is the only Italian coach who was able to read the room and make his teams play at “European rhythms.”
Simeone Inzaghi brought Inter to the Champs League final twice. Carlo Ancelotti is the King of European ball. We didn't want these managers, we wanted to stay with a failing Spalletti and then an inexperienced Gattuso instead. There were always much better options available, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
I've already accepted this fate if it happens, time and time again our guys just don't shine anymore.
Italian football is in a situation where two things can be true at the same time. Of course as a public if we show complacency and are in denial we are contributing to the problem but for me the truth is that Italian football reached a nadir in the mid 2010s and has slowly been recovering since then. I think this is where much gets lost in translation. Many speak as if we are in a timeline where we went from Milan Inter 2008-2011 to now without a massive gap in between where the league collapsed and that we are now on the brink of collapse. No this already happened. Look at the CL and EL results in the 2010s..look at the under 21 team and the national team selection pool in the 2010s. The collapse was so massive that even though there have been signs of recovery the rotten system does threaten to pull itself back into the abyss if the correct steps are not taken. The end of the world is not coming we are living in the wake of it.
I listen to these guys weekly and they are intelligent but again the league was financially destroyed in the 2010s and now they are saying maybe it's too late to ever recover. Yes if the standards are dominating as we did in the 90s and pre 2006 scandal that likely will never happen again but Inter Milan Roma Atalanta Bologna Como Fiorentina are in much better financial shape than they were in the 2010s. Juve spends a lot of money but bought all the wrong players. Lazio are financially a mess and need a new owner but overall the top 8 clubs are on an upswing from 10 years ago. Everything else they said is true. Tactically and psychologically Italian football needs to change and needs to be brave. Playing and promoting Italian youth is the get out of jail free card here. If the top teams did this instead of buying 10 average foreigners they could buy one or two true star players to build around. They need to be brave and play/promote italians. This goes for small clubs too. play your youth and spend your money on better quality foreigners. it is a simple game you just need to play hard.
Come on guys, italianclubs losing is really worrying but this does not mean we won’t qualify! We have enough quality to be there in June! We will beat N. Ireland and then we will see a united team fighting away and bringing qualification home! Sorry but I cannot see it in another way right now! I hope I am not wrong.
In this modern era, I have always had one thought that I would try to galvanize as a manager. I always thought instead of trying to over emphasize tactics and which shots you take and which you don't, and pass completion, and all that etc. etc. when you know 99% of teams will try to play that way no matter how big or small...I always thought they way to counter it (other than actually counterattacking) was to allow your squad to fall in love with the game again. Let them express themselves on the football. See what unique skillsets they have, and instead of seeing it as negatives and forcing players to play how you want to mimic, let the players play naturally. Let players use more skill if they can, let them try more shooting from different areas, keep defensive concepts simple, let your distributors try killer passes, keep the ball away from your half of the field...if that means more clearances and more direct ways of attacking and relieving pressure in isolated moments, so be it. Let players switch sides, roam a bit...let the players do the things they are good at and understand what you are not good at. From my perspective, I think I am agreeing with you...in essence, too much drilling and wanting to play a specific way...too much expecting players to be robots...I honestly think the first manager who lets his players enjoy the game again and express themselves with the football may have an advantage.
One more thought I had... So, now I must give Spal the Baldy credit...one of the best things he did was allow Kvara to be Kvara at Napoli....at PSG, Kvara is probably being forced not to do certain things skillfully that he is good at. This is an example of my own mindset in this era.
the two things are not really related its not like Atalanta Juve Inter have a massive Italian core of players or that N. Ireland Bosnia Wales are in great shape with a player base performing in the CL either. People just want Italian football to improve and want to make a point about it. There is also the factor that it is easy to publicly catastrophise before it happens so you can shrug your shoulders. A lot of people in the media like to do this to show the rest of the football world that you cant clown on them because they are already ahead of it. the brave thing to do is just wait and take it on the chin one way or another. we could very much lose. any team really could lose to Wales in a knockout game. The format is very unforgiving. There is no doubt that Italian football is corrupt and choking itself in many respects. The nepotism and bias is a serious problem but we have to remember how bad it was 10 years ago. This is how many other leagues over the decades have experienced Europe. Bundesliga and Ligue 1 go through this all the time. Spanish teams are also not doing very well in Europe in the 2020s so far. This is our current level. Some years will be better than others. Our teams don't have the depth to be good in two competitions. This year in particular was a perfect storm.
You know what is interesting, is just last night on my way during some commute, I was thinking literally about this. The qualifying failure in 2018 stunned me, the 2022 failure nearly broke me, even up to this point I have been angry... But I thought "ok, what if we don't qualify" and the thing I feel most if we don't qualify is we have to take it on the chin...the feeling is it may be too late to fix things...I think if we fail here there is still time to begin fixing if we take this one on the chin straight up...IF we do not qualify I feel more prepared than ever to just take this one and look ahead how to fix...but I am merely a fan...I wish the leaders felt this way
For me the problem is people are looking at this from too close a perspective. If you look even at 2006 that was the final result of Serie A and Italian football dominating Europe and the under 21s from 1987-2005 more or less. The problems started then. If you look at the younger players of the 2000s it was only De Rossi and Cassano that were of any quality. Guys Barone Zacardo even Perotta or Grosso Barzagli Iaquinta at that time were not at the level of the players of the 90s. That team was carried by the best of the Under 21 players from the 90s. The 2006 scandal destroyed Juve and Milan and therefore Serie A. Inter enjoyed the spoils for a time and then they too went bankrupt. Majority of the old owners sold their clubs and as the 2010s began we were completely behind producing players like Nocerino and Pepe. Things were done in the 2010s to revamp Italian football. Inter Milan Juve slowly rebuilt themselves. Roma Napoli Fiorentina Bologna Atalanta and now Como created exciting projects and had some wonderful results in the 2020s Italy won Euro 2020 but the collapse of the late 2000s means the clubs and national team are still very vulnerable. We are not strong enough to avoid playoffs or go on runs in europe every year and then anything can happen. It will take a long time to fully recover. Italian football in 2026 is stronger than it was in 2016. Hopefully the prospect of hosting Euro 2032 can be a boost and bring modern stadiums and renovations and revenue. I have no problem with Italians going to Germany to play. They need to be brave leave home and compete. This is the result of a 20 year cycle just like the great results in the 2000s were. We cant change much on a dime.
Not last year when we could've gotten him, he said Italy never approached him, so instead they doubled down with Spalletti going into Norway which even before then I was saying it was the wrong move.
Spalletti should not have been kept on past euro 2024. It's a domino effect of Mancini leaving halfway through a campaign that they figured Spalletti needed more time. The only way to end this madness is to not keep Gatusso on past 2026 even if they do qualify. Otherwise they will fire him halfway to 2028 lol.
Italy asked him once, possible twice. If his heart isn't in it the first two times, then why ask again? Italy should not be the pick me girl all the time. FORZA AZZURRI, CAZZO