Why Italy Had To Lose In Such A Disgraceful Way

by Sebastian Shepard

After watching the Italian national team’s disastrous exit from the World Cup, I could not help but think that such a flaccid performance was required not just once, but twice. Why? The myth of the 2006 champions has punished la Nazionale for far too long, and such a powerful story like being ‘i campioni del mondo’ needed to be really shaken out of everyone’s minds.

What is this myth? It is the continued idea that the 2006 team was perfect and the same formula would produce similar, if not victorious results.

I am not saying the great players of the winning campaign four years ago were not great. They were, and their lifting of the trophy was deserved. However, the players of Germany 2006, and more importantly, the near identical tactics to go with them, were so apocalyptically bad in the following tournaments that they needed to be unequivocally humiliated.

But to shatter the continued reliance on essentially the same team, this ridiculous humbling had to happen twice. What are the twin catastrophes?

The first requisite effort was the 2008 European championship where gli Azzurri whimpered out of the penalty shoot out with Spain and scarcely made an impact on anybody’s mind, and the second was the three winless games of South Africa 2010.

Why suffer the pain of two defeats? Why not learn from 2008 and rebuild to be competitive in two years time? They probably should and would have, but for one reason: In 2008, the exit was a tragic.

Italy had a team of then world class players: Luca Toni couldn’t stop scoring for Bayern, Pirlo could still dictate a game from the midfield like nobody else (except for Xavi), Buffon was superman, the creative attacker Cassano had been recalled, De Rossi could run and tackle his way through a small army, etc.

Italy had an excuse, and it wasn’t their average players (as it was most recently). It was a penalty shoot out that had them eliminated after all, a bit of luck — tragedy. Not that Spain didn’t fully and overwhelmingly deserve their victory, but Italy weren’t consistently outplayed by mediocre teams as in 2010.

1 win, 2 draws and a loss against France, Spain, Romania and Holland in 2008 is surely better than 2 draws and a loss against Paraguay, New Zealand, and Slovakia in 2010.

But in 2010 the exit was tragicomic. Why? The same core that failed in 2008 was given the green light to fail again. The starting XI of Thursday’s match contained 5 non-2006 players, and had Buffon and Pirlo been healthy, that number would have been only 3.

The result of the reliance on them was summed up midway through the first half when Lippi was seen giving instructions to a panting Gattuso. This is the same player who ran away Cristiano Ronaldo’s threat in the 2007 champions league, now huffing for breath a third of the way through a game — tragicomic.

Pirlo was the only 2006 player who looked like he could still make a game his own, as Italy only came alive for the thirty minutes (in three games) he ran the show from the midfield.

But let’s not take Pirlo’s inspiring play and lament, “Oh, if only Pirlo had been healthy, surely Italy would have reached the semis at least.” Absolutely not. This is the exact same interpretation of 2008, and here one cannot view Italy’s loss as a tragedy.

But far more importantly, the tactics of 2006 were used massively inappropriately, and hopeful the disastrous performances will prevent this from happening again with immediate effect. While Grosso, Materazzi, Cannavaro, Zambrotta and Buffon in 2006 will go down as one of the best defense units in World Cup history, attempting to use the same “defense first” idea with a outrageously weaker back line leads to 5 goals in three games against average sides.

It is as if Lippi took the stereotype of Italy being defense-minded seriously, even when it clearly hurt their chances. Similarly, the continued traditional reliance on Juventus players, even in a year where they cannot even qualify for the Champions League, was similarly appalling.

While I do not wish to join the chorus of “Balotelli + Cassano in Nazionale” voices, I will say there were numerous teams with Italian players on them that produced better results all season than the Juve group, and they at least merited a chance with gli Azzurri.

This is not to say the entire 2006 class minus Pirlo must leave before Euro 2012. De Rossi and Buffon especially will still be crucial players.

But this is a moment of catharsis for Italy. The ridiculous tactical and defensive choices, the anti-creative attacking selection, the reliance on 2006 veterans, the belief that Juventus = Italy — all of this can now end without dissent from the media, fans or the team itself.

This is why the catastrophe had to happen twice. Once was not enough to arouse the recognition of the problems in near everything from players to coaching. Two times surely will awaken everyone to how the myths of 2006 preemptively ruined the two successive chances for major honors for La Nazionale.