Something Is Rotten In Italy

Having grown up a faithful hockey fan in Hamilton, Ontario, I started my conversion to the church of the beautiful game in the late summer of 1978. While on a family vacation in New York, my uncle took me and my stepfather to see the Cosmos. This was when they were in their heyday.

Beckenbauer

Orr

Chinaglia

Espo

Pele had retired the year before and I had no clue what I had missed. It didn’t matter, though. Before the first half was over, I was hooked, drawn in by the combination of Franz Beckenbauer and Giorgio Chinaglia. I was amazed at how Beckenbauer, with casual grace, controlled the whole game from the back.  He reminded me of the great Boston Bruin defenseman, Bobby Orr, and Chinaglia of Orr’s teammate and fellow Hall Of Famer, Phil Esposito. He was a hulking forward who loved to play with his back to goal and muscle his way through any number of defenders.

When we went home to Canada, I started high school and played soccer whenever the weather allowed.

My first World Cup, then, was Spain 1982.  I watched the tournament on the CBC in my friend Stavros’ basement. His parents were Greek immigrants and neither spoke a lick of English. His father watched the games with us when he wasn’t at work and his mother cooked all the time.  I had a voracious appetite.  My mother constantly complained that I was eating us out of house and home and threatened to put a lock on the fridge. Stavros’ mom, though, was only to glad to have another mouth to feed. She would look at me with a smile and hold her hands about three inches apart, moving them in an up and down motion.

“She says you’re too skinny,” Stavros told me when I inquired.  Go figure.

Stavros and I spent June of ’82 rooting for Italy on the CBC. According to Stavros, since the Greeks weren’t playing, the Italians were obviously the best team in the tournament. At first, Italy didn’t respond to our exhortations. They squeaked through the first group stage pretty much asleep at the switch, then, in a gruppo di morte with Argentina and Brazil, barely held off the Argentines and Diego Maradona.

The classy Brazilians thoroughly dismantled Argentina. In a prelude to the Hand Of God in Mexico, a petulant Maradona drew a red card for a vicious kick on a Brazilian when it was obvious that Argentina’s reign as champions was at an end.

It would be the Azzurri and the Selecao in a showdown to move on to the semifinal.  Brazil looked unstoppable to me.  The Italians seemingly had no scoring threat whatsoever and there was no way they were going to keep their opponents off the board for ninety minutes.

When I suggested this to Stavros, his face darkened with scorn and derision.  What did I know?  The Italians were the best team in the world, next to the Greeks of course, and they would win this tournament, wait and see. Ever mindful of his mother’s fine table, I quickly agreed that yes, this was so. I was fully prepared to commiserate and offer condolences after the Brazilians mopped the floor with the Azzurri and went on to the semifinals.

Paolo Rossi

Despite a strong start by Italy, it certainly looked as though sympathies would be called for. The Brazilians dominated almost the entire match, playing keep away with the ball, stretching and misdirecting the Italian defense but never quite breaking it down. Their confidence was obvious and victory seemed only a matter of time. Then a little fellow named Paolo Rossi woke from his four game nap and decided to get involved.

He latched onto a casual back pass and, in the blink of an eye, put it past the startled Brazilian netminder. This had the effect of putting some urgency into the Selecao attack and they soon equalized, twice in fact. Each time, however, Rossi would swoop in,  intercept another pass and, as Tommy Smith is fond of saying, bury the ball in the old onion bag.

I had learned an important lesson about tactics that day.  Solid, patient and determined teamwork on defense could cause even the most potent attack to overreach and quick strikes on the counterattack might catch a stronger side by surprise.  As I stuffed a boureki into my mouth, I happily listened to Stavros’ fifth or sixth I told you so.

Italy would go on to win the Cup and Rossi would become the only player at the top level to claim the World Cup Trophy, the Golden Boot and Golden Ball all in one tournament. All for picking up a few scrapes in the last three of seven matches.  Never mind all the work in the back by the legends Franco Baresi, Guisepe Bergomi and Dino Zoff.

While Brazil has weaved their offensive magic to win five World Cups, it is hard to argue with the Italians taking the opposite road to earn four.  Most say that “parking the bus” is not as attractive as opening up the game but I beg to differ.  It can be very thrilling to see a hard working side lay it all on the line to outrun a thoroughbred side like Barca or Arsenal.

The Confederations Cup match between Spain and the USA last year is a perfect example of what I mean. The Spaniards threw everything but the kitchen sink at the Americans yet the Yanks were always in the right place to make a perfect tackle or cut out a dangerous pass. If the Spaniards did find enough space to take a shot, someone would throw themselves in front of it before it could reach the goal.

The sensation was like escaping certain death every few seconds. If that’s what it feels like to be a woman and have multiple orgasms, then I can certainly understand their frustration with men. Think of the inevitable letdown a team goes through after a goal has been scored. The job is done and you can roll over and take a quick nap.  Give me good defense every time.

The trouble in Serie A and with the Italian national team now, is that well timed tackles and fearless play are not what win the ball away from the opponent anymore. Instead, defensive tactics have devolved into endless obstruction, shirt tugging and tripping, not to mention the blatant diving in hopes of fooling the referee.

Would you rather win like this?

Or this?

The decay first became evident at the last World Cup. In the final against France, Marco Materazzi draped himself over Zinedine Zidane, the most dangerous player on the pitch, tugging and pulling like a two year old begging for a cookie, nattering away at the Frenchman for 110 minutes. Finally, he said the right (or wrong) thing about Zizou’s maman and Zidane snapped. Yes, he should have known better than to rise to the bait but it was still a classless thing for Materazzi to do. In the ensuing four years, Materazzi has basked in his infamy and others have followed his example.

Almost four years later, in Rome on Wednesday evening, all that is wrong with Italian football was on display at the Coppa Italia final. The top two clubs in the race for the Scudetto were meeting to take the first step towards a possible domestic double and in Internazionale’s case, a European treble.

Deceitful

Unfortunately, the bevy of foreign stars was overshadowed by the antics of the homegrown talent.  Isn’t that a sad bit of irony?   The foreign players should be the spice added to the soup, not the meat and potatoes. Instead, it was the Italian players who soured the broth, their antics overshadowing the good play of, on this night, Diego Milito Javier Zanetti, Taddei and Mirko Vucinic.

For every time that Maicon or E’to made a dazzling run, there was Nico Burdisso, bundling over every blue shirt within striking distance, then arguing each foul with the referee, or the ex Bayern bench warmer, Luca Toni now too old to outrun defenders and consigned to trying to outwrestle them. In one instance, after a prolonged tug of war with Ivan Cordoba, Toni broke free and then executed a perfect single axel that would have made Evgeny Plushenko blush with fatherly pride. Fortunately, the only judge scoring remained unimpressed.

Sadistic

In the second half, Francesco Totti came on to try to spark the Roma attack. If Luca Toni has slowed with age, though, then Totti has certainly been petrified. He spent much of the match standing still, waiting for the ball to happen by. When it did, he was unable to do much with it. Finally, after it became evident that Diego Milito’s first half strike was going to stand up, Totti churlishly kicked Balotelli in the calf as the youngster beat him to the line and made for goal. The resultant red card was the closest thing to fire that the Roma number ten was able to kindle. It was also shades of Maradona in ’82. Classless.

It was Zidane’s old nemesis, Marco Materazzi, though, who easily won the villain of the match award. Somehow, despite throwing himself into several late tackles, spikes up, the clown prince of instigation managed to escape with just a single yellow card. Thankfully, the referee ignored the several flops that Materazzi took whenever an Inter player so much as tapped him on the shoulder.

The Clown Prince who...

...secretly wishes he was...

...Dennis Rodman.

Most amusing was the prolonged spasmodic thrashing went into beside the Roma net after Phillipe Mexes had delivered a weak sort of half punch, half shove to the ribs trying to reach a lazy header that eventually drifted out of bounds. If any of you have ever taken a good shot to the ribcage, you know that it has a paralyzing effect, knocking the wind out of you. Painful yes, seizure inducing no.

Of late, Serie A matches have been my last choice when viewing football, whereas five years ago they would have been among the first. Italian matches are so full of stops and starts and dead time that they might as well be like American football and show commercials during play. It is the only competition I watch where I recognize the referees. When that happens, you know there’s something wrong with the quality of play. I even find myself tuning in to MLS matches rather than watch the whistlefest that Serie A has become.  If the half empty stadia around the league and the exodus of stars like Kaka and Ibrahimovic are any indication, I am not alone in my opinion.

It would be a shame if it were to take the Serie A becoming a second tier league before any changes are made. The rot is deep-seated now. League officials and club owners need to take a deep breath, smell the air and begin cleaning house before it’s too late.

Martin Palazzotto

Martin Palazzotto’s day job is in the yachting industry.  Having to live in close quarters with Brits, Scots, Kiwis, Aussies, Saffers and various Europeans for much of his adult life has irreversibly encoded the culture of football into his DNA.  He currently lives in Fort Lauderdale, where, unfortunately for you, his access to soccer is limited to cable and the internet.