Month: June 2010

Not Quite the End of the World

Remember the name: Kamil Kopúnek. For Italian fans the Slovakian can now take his place alongside Pak Doo-Ik and Ahn Jung-Hwan on the Azzurri’s podium of World Cup infamy. It may seem an unlikely trio, but all three players have in their time put paid to the Italy’s World Cup hopes, and in doing so represent the lowest points in the four-time winners’ otherwise impressive tournament record. But while defeats to North Korea in 1966 and South Korea in 2002 sent shockwaves reverberating around the football world, Italy’s lacklustre performance and ultimate capitulation in 2010 had a certain inevitability. After disappointing 1-1 draws against Paraguay and New Zealand, a win – while not essential – was certainly the Italian objective in their final group match against Slovakia. Instead, the Azzurri found themselves two goals down after 73 minutes, and despite rallying a late fight-back, Italy’s elimination was effectively sealed the moment late substitute Kopúnek burst between two defenders to lift the ball over Fabrizio Marchetti with his very first touch of the game. So low were expectations surrounding the defending champions’ campaign in South Africa that reaction to Slovakia’s third goal was less one of outrage and more a collective groan of relief and resignation.

Italy’s disastrous exit from the World Cup in 2010 made the euphoria of Italy’s victory in Berlin – still fresh in the memories of all Italians – suddenly seem every bit four years ago. In 2006, few would have predicted both finalists in Germany crashing out at the first hurdle in South Africa. And yet while the French can point to internal struggles and their federation’s misguided faith in an increasingly eccentric coach, whose bizarre alienation of fans, press, staff and players is reason enough for their shambolic demise, the Italians have fewer excuses. Certainly that was the view of fans, who on Italy’s return from South Africa, subjected their fallen heroes to a tirade of jeers and abuse as they trudged with hung heads through the arrivals gate at Rome’s Fiumicino airport.

To assess just how Italy went from World Champions to national disgrace requires a quick rewind to Berlin four years ago, when, just as in 1982, Italy’s national team emerged from the wreckage of domestic scandal as unlikely but worthy World Cup winners. The Italian coach Marcello Lippi had already decided not to renew his expiring contract with the FIGC (Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio), and three days after enjoying what he described as his “most satisfying moment as a coach”, was replaced by former Italian international Roberto Donadoni. It was a surprising choice: Donadoni’s greatest achievement as a coach so far had been to lead unfashionable Livorno to the top half of Serie A, and he certainly lacked experience at a major club. He was also faced the unenviable task of taking over a winning team in which any negative result is bound to be greeted with criticism. With the team still riding the highs of Berlin, Donadoni’s side’s performances were always going to compare unfavourably with Lippi’s, and the new coach struggled to assert his own identity on the world champions. It was a reign which seemed doomed from the start: Donadoni’s contract contained a clause stating it would only be renewed should Italy reach the semi-finals of Euro 2008 — when Italy were eliminated in a penalty shoot-out by Spain in the quarter-finals, everyone knew the game was up.

More surprising was what was to follow. The FIGC, in an unexpected move, recalled Lippi, who had spent the two years since the World Cup on the beach and at home in the Tuscan coastal town of Viareggio, basking in his new life as a national hero. Arriving at his first press conference since being recalled out of retirement, Lippi appeared tanned and relaxed, happy to once again don the federation blazer and “ready to pick up where [he] left off.” This statement of intent sent a twinge of discomfort down the spines of watching fans. The phrase “minestra riscaldata”, literally “reheated soup” is used in Italian soccer circles to describe the ill-conceived return of an ex-player or coach to his place of former glory, the idea being that it’s never as good second time around. Keen observers had to ask why Lippi, having achieved the sport’s ultimate accolade, would choose to give up a life of permanent hero-status to take Italy to another World Cup? The Azzurri’s victory in 2006 may have seemed unlikely at the outset, but even less probable was a repeat in 2010. Only Vittorio Pozzo, Italy’s coach in 1934 and 1938, had led a team to back-to-back successes, and not since Brazil in 1958 and 1962 had a nation won two World Cups on the bounce. Yet Lippi seemed happy to risk forever tarnishing his image of cigar-chomping hero of Berlin by attempting this extraordinary double.

Italy’s World Cup-winning captain, Fabio Cannavaro, was guilty of a similar arrogance. Unlike former captain Paolo Maldini, (who retired from international football after the 2002 World Cup, only to watch his would-be teammates lift the trophy four years later), Cannavaro had won it all but still wanted more, just like Lippi. Majestic at the World Cup four years ago, his performances in Germany were enough to earn him the Ballon d’Or in 2006. A World Cup victory seemed like a natural moment to call it a day, yet Cannavaro continued to lead the Azzurri, despite showing inconsistent form since returning to Juventus from Real Madrid. Once one of Italy’s quickest defenders, Cannavaro’s rapid decline culminated, sadly, in being made to look every bit the 36-year-old in South Africa.

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The defending champions qualified for South Africa relatively comfortably, yet Lippi’s dependence on the core group of players that had triumphed in 2006 spoke volumes about not just his short-term priorities but also his obsession with Italy’s World Cup win four years earlier. Many questioned the reliance on certain players from Juventus: given the Turin club’s poor season the inclusion of wayward stars Camoranesi, Iaquinta and the aforementioned Cannavaro this time around seemed to have more to do with Lippi’s strong ties to his former employers. Lippi’s coaching philosophy emphasises team spirit and unity, but while the heroes of Berlin still had a role to play, many had lost the form they’d showed four years ago, and – perhaps more importantly – all were four years older. Lippi’s responded to critics by reminding them of his World Cup pedigree, and to those who raised concerns over the age of the squad pointed out that its average age was actually younger than in 2006. But in Germany Lippi had struck upon a group of top professionals players at their peak, in 2010 the gulf between levels of experience was startling.

Perhaps in an attempt to silence doubters Lippi selected several younger players who shared just a few caps between them as late inclusions into the squad. All had enjoyed positive domestic seasons yet none had been used regularly during Italy’s qualifying campaign and all lacked international experience (the fact that most were plucked from Serie A’s smaller clubs meant they were unfamiliar with the kind of pressure reserved for top-of-the-table clashes or matches in the Champions League). Though their selection seemed a knee-jerk reaction by Lippi, some of these players were immediately thrown into the deep-end in South Africa. Genoa left-back Domenico Criscito and Fiorentina’s elegant playmaker Riccardo Montolivo acquitted themselves well in tough circumstances, but others, such as Juventus midfielder Claudio Marchisio and Cagliari goalkeeper Fabrizio Marchetti, appeared out of their depth. Montolivo and Marchetti only became first choices due to injuries to otherwise certain starters: Milan’s regista Andrea Pirlo damaged a calf just days before the tournament, while Gigi Buffon bowed out at half-time in Italy’s opening match after aggravating a problem with his sciatic nerve, an injury which ruled him out of the rest of the competition.

Though injuries to key men naturally proved a massive blow for Italy, the team was further hampered by Lippi’s disparate squad, which consisted of too many players unused to performing at this level. For a country with a long history of world-class playmakers, Italy went into this World Cup without an out-and-out number ten, a designated trequartista or fantasista in the Roberto Baggio mould. Without a player with such qualities, in all three of their matches Italy looked desperately short of creativity in the final third. At 35, Alessandro Del Piero was judged past his prime, while Francesco Totti’s protracted retirement from international football had effectively excluded him from rejoining the squad. Lippi’s stubbornness is perhaps most evident in his failure to call temperamental forwards Antonio Cassano and Mario Balotelli to the international fold. While Balotelli still shows regular signs of immaturity, Cassano has consistently impressed for Sampdoria over the last two seasons, helping the Genoese club to qualify for the Champions League for the first time in eighteen years. Yet Lippi continued to ignore him to the frustration of fans, often refusing to answer the press’s questions regarding the player’s exclusion.

The attitude of Italians — coaches, players, press, fans — before a World Cup is typically one of cautious optimism (or false pessimism). You may say Italians love a crisis: it takes the pressure off and makes an ultimately positive campaign all the more enjoyable. The national team is a notoriously slow starter in major tournaments, and most fans expect a rocky road to success. Yet this year Italy started poorly and only got worse, and there was a pervading sense of imminent failure prior to the defeat against Slovakia.

South Africa 2010 officially ranks as Italy’s worst ever World Cup performance. Just as in 1966 and 1974, the Azzurri failed to progress from the group stage, but this year they were unable to record a single victory in three matches — against Paraguay, New Zealand or Slovakia — finishing bottom of Group F. Following the disastrous elimination, it was Lippi who predictably received most of the blame. The coach even shouldered all responsibility in his post-match press conference.

Certainly Italy’s notorious press was quick to pounce. Alberto Cerruti, chief football correspondent of the Milan-based daily La Gazzetta dello Sport, described Italy’s performance as “unwatchable”, but seemed particularly disappointed with the casual manner in which Italy’s hard-earned title was relinquished. The director of Rome’s Corriere dello Sport, Alessandro Vocalelli, was more scathing, appearing on an online video just hours after the final whistle to bemoan Lippi’s “incomprehensible selections and inexplicable tactics” which had resulted in a “total, humiliating failure, from which nobody should be exculpated.” Yet others saw a greater issue with Italian football at large. Former Milan and Italy coach Arrigo Sacchi, himself no stranger to the scorn of critics, felt the root of the problem lay in Italy’s culture of “ignorance and violence”, citing a “crisis in the Italian system.”

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Sacchi may be going too far by condemning contemporary Italian society, yet the state of the country’s game has been in decline for several years, to the extent in which it has become almost de rigeur to disparage Serie A, Italy’s domestic championship, once the most admired league in Europe. Sacchi pointed to the fact that Italian clubs crashed out prematurely in European competition last season. The one exception, Inter, have a foreign coach and an almost completely foreign squad. Indeed, of the twenty-three players Lippi took to South Africa, not one hailed from José Mourinho’s treble winners, the first time ever an Italian World Cup squad has not contained a single player from the nerazzurri. The conclusion one takes from this is that there is an excess of foreign players in Italy, whose presence denies promising Italian youngsters the chance of breaking through at the biggest clubs. Consequently, Italy’s 2010 squad included players from Genoa, Bari, Udinese and Cagliari, clubs hardly renowned for providing members of the Italian national team.

There are those in Italy that have suggested the return of a restriction on the number of foreign players a team may field at one time. But Italy is definitely not the only nation with a strong domestic league faced with this dilemma. England has also discovered that top-class foreigners may make for an entertaining league but their presence can be detrimental to the national team’s success. Spain – despite the plethora of foreign players in La Liga – seem to have solved this problem by selecting a squad mostly comprised of players from the two biggest clubs, Barcelona and Real Madrid. In contrast, German clubs work in closer conjunction with its federation, and their philosophy of investing in youth rather than spending heavily naturally encourages a strong national side.

FIGC president Giancarlo Abete has already announced an inquiry into Italian football’s “structural crisis”, but to suggest a shake-up of Italian system is excessive. The problems cited as causes of Italy’s poor displays in 2010 were already in place in 2006, when Italian football was also still reeling from the aftershocks of calciopoli. Some claimed it was this scandal which galvanized the team to victory in Germany, and Italian players certainly appeared lacking in motivation in South Africa. But Lippi was correct to blame himself: his return was gearing solely towards this event, and so he had no interest in making long-term plans and no vision of the future since it did not concern him. He was obsessed with the victory of 2006, and intent on repeating it all costs, at the expense of his own better judgment. Sadly for Italy, he did not have the means — either tactically or technically — to realize that dream. The FIGC showed desperate short-sightedness in rehiring Lippi, who in turn showed an alarming degree of footballing-masochism in attempting a second win in succession. For all Donadoni’s inexperience, had the Italian federation stuck by him Italy would have probably arrived in South Africa with a more balanced and settled side. Likewise the younger players who did not appear ready at this tournament would have no doubt been groomed specifically in preparation for the World Cup stage.

The effects of calciopoli have tempered spending in Italy, and over the last two seasons the biggest Italian clubs –Inter, Milan, Juventus, Roma, Fiorentina and Sampdoria — have put their faith in local young players who have grown into first-team regulars. Lippi’s replacement, 52-year-old Cesare Prandelli, has been selected by the FIGC specifically for his proven track-record with younger players. At Verona, Parma and Fiorentina specifically, Prandelli had built attack-minded teams around the promise of youth. Though he spent six seasons as a player at Juventus, Prandelli may benefit from having never coached one of Italy’s biggest clubs, and his lack of close connections to Italian football’s superpowers may work in his favour. Certainly he will employ a fresher, more open approach to player selection, already stating that Cassano and Balotelli will figure in his plans. More unexpected were his comments surrounding the sometimes controversial oriundi (naturalised citizens eligible for the national team) whom he declared “new Italians.”

While Italians may be Italy’s biggest fans, they’re also its harshest critics, and once the dust settles on Lippi’s second era in charge they’ll probably realise the future doesn’t appear quite so bleak. It would take a brave man to bet against Italy going far in Brazil in 2014. As this World Cup has already proven, four years can be an awfully long time in football.

Breakfast in America

In case you hadn’t noticed, the World Cup got underway last weekend in South Africa. For one month every four years, the planet’s greatest sporting event has, historically, had a tendency to consume my every waking second. This year is no different, although since Italy lifted the trophy in 2006 I’ve obtained United States residency, meaning I am experiencing the tournament from this side of the Atlantic for the very first time. This situation has led to some interesting observations, some more expected than others, as I grapple with the clichéd notion of being an avid soccer nut in a country that — as we’re so often told — just doesn’t care.

Johannesburg is six hours ahead of New York, so I get to watch the day’s earliest match before leaving for work. Once in the office I close my internet browser and hunker down until I can return home, where, thanks to the miracle of DVR, two more games await my viewing pleasure. Though avoiding the score has proven more difficult than expected. I’ve had to change my route several times when I’ve seen soccer fans amassed outside a sports bar, and was even forced to move to the other end of a subway car when I heard some Brazilians talking futebol.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had to set the alarm for football matches. During the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan (when I was still living in England), most games were scheduled for the early morning, a novelty which resulted in BBC commentator John Motson developing a tiresome fixation with breakfast-related puns. Watching football on American networks can also bewilder, but for entirely different reasons. I still don’t understand why the commentary is called “the call” (as in “Martin Tyler with the call”) or why half-time is known simply as “the half” (“We’re goalless at the half.”). The alternative is the local Spanish language channel Univision, where the World Cup is co-hosted by young latinas in figure hugging national team jerseys, and any punditry is generally forsaken in favor of dancing, chanting and fervent flag-waving. Over on ESPN coverage is generally quite polished, with some big names on the panel: Klinsmann, Gullit, McManaman, McCoist, Lalas, Bartlett, Martinez (OK, some names are bigger than others). It’s clear the anchors are being fed information about players and previous tournaments by a soccer intern with encyclopedic knowledge of World Cup history, in a desperate but comprehensible attempt to dispel the myth that Americans know nothing about the game.

Whether you see it as a failure or a refusal, the fact that America has never fully embraced soccer is both fuel for those who dismiss the sport and a burden to its genuine fans. New York, of course, is a bit different. The city is still a natural port of call for anyone arriving from overseas or across the border, and some 36% of the current population is foreign-born. That’s a lot of soccer fans. New York State has no official language: English is obviously the de facto language but of the nine million people who live in the city less than half are native English speakers. On a day like today — when the air is thick and temperatures hit the mid-90s and football is blaring out of every bar, deli and taxicab – New York feels a lot closer to Naples or São Paulo than the United States.

That’s not to say the locals don’t make themselves heard. Yesterday I saw dozens of young Americans in USA jerseys heading to bars to watch their team’s match with Slovenia, while for several weeks shoppers on 57th Street have been subjected to Clint Dempsey’s screaming face looming large on the exterior of NikeTown. The United States’ games have even made the front pages of the Times, Post and Daily News. Despite only intermittent success in recent years, interest in the national team has steadily risen to a point where they today merit respect and generate media frenzy and support during the World Cup. Many casual American soccer fans become genuinely curious about the tournament, and perhaps even a tad envious of the kind of passion it invokes in people of other nationalities.

But come September it’s unlikely these same fans will be getting up at nine on a Sunday morning to watch European league matches. For this reason I sometimes sympathize with the professionals representing the United States, as they’ve had to work doubly hard to garner support from skeptics and casual, fair-weather fans whose interest is piqued only every four years. It’s like when people get excited about synchronized swimming during the Olympics.

A college friend of mine (and self-confessed soccer ignoramus) wrote to me recently asking me for my take on why the game has never taken off in the United States. After all, since the 1960s a host of characters from the worlds of football, politics, entertainment and business have tried to make soccer a more serious sport here, without ever fully succeeding. In the 1970s some of the sport’s biggest names — including Pele, Beckenbauer, Best and Cruyff — made the NASL a marketing man’s dream, but the novelty wore off by the early 1980s and the league collapsed soon after. In 1994 the United States even hosted a highly successful World Cup (breaking all attendance records), but the MLS (which was created as part of the U.S.’s hosting bid) has had a turbulent history ever since, and remains a relatively weak league whose rosters are populated mainly by young American talent and veterans from South America, despite more recent high-profile European arrivals, such as David Beckham and Thierry Henry.

Soccer is the most played sport at high-school level in this country, and extremely popular in the major cities and particularly among the under-30s, but I don’t think it will ever “take off” in the way my friend was implying. The problem is precisely that: football doesn’t really “take off” anywhere – it’s ingrained culturally and people either get it or they don’t. Sadly for America everyone gets it but them. In Asia, large populations with growing economies such as Japan, China and India, have embraced the game more fervently in recent years, but they didn’t have their own hugely popular and highly lucrative sports leagues in place. In the United States the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL are very much ingrained; soccer is not really necessary, neither economically nor culturally.

Then of course there is the game itself. A lot has been made of the cautious nature of the first round of matches at this World Cup, but it seems the ones who complain about the football (or the vuvuzelas for that matter) are the ones who don’t really enjoy soccer and probably begrudge having to sit through it. Many Americans I’ve spoken to this week have questioned the number of matches which have ended in parity, their impression being that a tied result is somewhat unsatisfactory. That a game must have a winner strikes me as a deeply American idea. I got into a very heated row with my boss twice this week after he suggested football would be improved if they eliminated draws from the sport entirely. Most surprising when you consider my boss is Italian — albeit one who moved to the Bronx in 1970 and now catches a football match only every four years (and then only when the Azzurri are playing). Major League Soccer conducted a similar experiment when it relaunched back in the mid-nineties. Concerned with the prospect of tied games, the league’s commissioners imposed an instant one-on-one sudden death shoot-out in the event of a match ending level after ninety minutes. In a perverse twist on the penalty shoot-out, the forward would start with the ball from the halfway line with only the goalkeeper to beat. This attempt to avoid alienating mainstream sports fans by making league matches — and penalty kicks themselves — more exciting only alienated soccer purists, and the league soon reverted to a conventional win-lose-draw points system.

In this regard both the MLS and my boss were guilty of seeing the game purely from the perspective of entertainment, which in this case means the ball crossing the goal-line. Personally, I’d always prefer to watch a tight 1-1 draw between two quality teams than an end-to-end goal-fest between two average ones. Fans who describe close World Cup or Champions League matches as “boring” also fail to recognize one of the elements that makes the game so special. Football is different to practically all other sports in that scoring is supposed to be difficult, so when a goal is scored it’s a big deal. It is a game built on patience and tactics, which of course enhances the tension and drama, which in turn are what make important games so absorbing. In basketball there is no element of tension or drama until the last 120 seconds of the fourth quarter, and that’s only if the teams are closely separated.

The very nature of football is contrary to the instant gratification provided by high-scoring American sports, which are first and foremost entertainment (and big business). Football is obviously entertainment in Europe too (and an even bigger business globally), but there are deeper cultural, social and political elements that give the game a greater resonance beyond the stadium, which if you’ve never lived in Europe or South America is perhaps not something that’s easy to comprehend. It’s for these reasons more than any other that I think soccer remains a sport that most Americans won’t think of again for another four years. But until then, if they ever change their minds they know where to find the rest of us.