Football

Why Team Italy won’t be missed in World Cup 2018

Published

9 years ago

November 15, 2017

After watching Italy over the last two matches of the playoffs, the World Cup will be much better without them.

The fans/stadium booing the Swedish national anthem was a disgrace and a serious lack of respect shown to the opposition.

The Italian players are slow, take three touches before passing the ball on and have that chest beating Joe Hart ‘passion’ but little else.

Sweden played as a team, Italy are on the way down.

So that’s Italy and Northern Ireland not at the World Cup. Incredible. Seriously though, the playoff against Sweden was in shambles. Am not usually one to blame the coach for poor performance but Ventura shoulders about 97 percent of the blame here. He’s been annoyingly inconsistent with his team selection and formations throughout the qualifying stages. In the first leg alone on Friday, he used three different formations (5-3-2, 3-4-3, and 4-2-4).

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If that’s not enough, he shoehorned Jorginho into that pathetic 5-3-2 of his in this second leg. For those who may not follow Italian football with as much interest, Jorginho has some ridiculous passing stats. He makes the likes of Busquets and Kroos look like Aaron Ramsey. Italian media and fans have been calling for Jorginho’s inclusion for about a year now especially considering how Napoli play. Ventura froze him out until the decisive game of a two-legged playoff.

This was a dick move if I ever saw one, waiting until the last possible moment to do the reasonable thing when he knew that it would have an almost zero effect. Also, why would any sane manager leave Insigne literally sitting on the water-cooler when your team needs to score? Bringing in Belotti who is just back from injury but not giving Insigne even 5 minutes?

Ventura will always be remembered by future Italian coaches at Coverciano as the guy NOT to emulate or copy ideas from. Finally, at least he should have been a gracious loser. Refusing to speak to TV stations but agreeing to RAI radio was just cowardly. Bye grandpa, you won’t be missed.