Forza Azzurri: From Rotterdam to Wembley

Even after Bukayo Saka buried his head in his shirt, I didn't realize what had happened.  Gianluigi Donnarumma picked himself up and walked away slowly, as if nothing had. It was only when I saw Roberto Mancini embrace his staff that the enormity of the moment started to wash over me.  

Somewhere, somehow, in the eternity between Jorginho's and Saka's miss, I had lost count of Italy's most important penalty shoot-out since the World Cup Final of July 9, 2006.

The one count I had faithfully kept, throughout the tournament, throughout the Final, only stopping just before the liquid images of Italy's Wembley triumph started to unfold on television before me, was of twenty-one years.  More than two decades had passed since my most excruciating football memory: Italy's Euro2000 Final defeat to France.

Since then, I have witnessed the thespian range of Italy in South Korea (2002), Milan in Deportivo (2004), Milan in Istanbul (2005), Italy in Kyiv (2012), and Italy in Milan failing to qualify for the World Cup (2018), but none of these farces and tragedies have the jabbing edges that Euro2000 Final has, those barbed images of abysmal dejection. 

It was how Italy lost.  They could sniff the trophy's silver.  Journalists in the press box were practically proofreading their final copy.  The Italy bench was almost spilling onto the field in anticipation.

What happened with less than ninety seconds remaining was unimaginable given how Italy had defended that tournament, and how they had edited out Zinedine Zidane and Thierry Henry from the Final's storyline.  But deep in injury time, Fabien Barethez's long clearance eluded Fabio Cannavaro, whose desperate attempt to head the ball away only helped it onto the path of Sylvain Wiltord, who snuck the ball under Francesco Toldo from an angle.

That was the moment Italy lost.  David Trezeguet's golden goal in extra time had the inevitability of the next day's tired headlines.  Best team of the tournament won! French football reigns supreme!

Del Piero (left) contemplates defeat in Euro2000

While Alessandro Del Piero (who missed two convertible
chances) stared off into that unredemptive Rotterdam night of July 2, 2000, the silver medal an albatross around his neck, I knew that seeing Italy win the European Championship and right this wrong would become an obsession of mine in the following years.

And during those years, I have witnessed Zlatan Ibrahimovic's backheel at Euro2004, a penalty shootout loss that started Spain's domination of international football (Euro2008 quarter-final) and a 4-0 pasting that marked its pause (Euro2012 Final), and, yes, that Simone Zaza penalty against Germany in Euro2016.  Yes, Italy won the World Cup in 2006, but that was to cancel out my pain of 1990 and 1994; the European Championship was the precise antidote for 2000.

Italy's triumph on Sunday at Wembley needed to shift the trauma of heartbreaking defeats to the genre's most brilliant method actor: England.  

That is the story of possible redemption that I told myself before and on Sunday, but reading the previews leading up to the Final, little space was granted to any Italian perspective in the English media.  Talking about 55 joyless years is a story that subsumes all, even for the neutral, and yet moving that colossal narrative rock only slightly reveals teeming particularities, nuances, missed narratives of big men like Gianluca Vialli and his battle with cancer, of big football countries like Italy standing on the cusp of becoming even bigger. 

I am one of those who believes that winning the European Championship is a higher achievement than winning the World Cup.  Not more significant in national memory, but more of a rigorous test of credentials.  The fact that the last four World Cups have been won by European nations only strengthens my conviction.  

But alongside the football question, Italy also needed to answer the spiritual one, the one that lingered for more than twenty years.  They did.  Nothing will ever erase the pain of that night in Rotterdam, but this helps. A lot.

Forza Azzurri!

On Milan's Return To The Champions League

I'm the type who twins his life's course with his football team's.  Doing so is a tacit acceptance that your daily rituals are inadequate to shape an amorphous sense of time, especially during this pandemic.  You look to the structure of the football week, the rounded edges of rote formations, the clockwork of kick-offs, as your team plays out your life in parallel, on another exhilarating plane above you.

There can then never be a moment without significance this way.  You score any personal success as your team's, and your team's failure as your own.  Just as certain songs comprise your life's soundtrack, your football team's successes constellate your memory, like glowing hooks on which you hang summers.

As Franck Kessie converted the second penalty against Atalanta on Sunday, May 23, he not only booked Milan's ticket to the Champions League after seven years of suffering, but he also opened up my summer to a possibility.  That is all I needed: to be on the cusp of something better.

Nothing focuses your club's rank and relevance in the football world like a Champions League Final.  Despite the thinly peopled stands, the dreamscape of Chelsea vs Manchester City--its stakes, its sheen, the exquisite shades of blue-- felt removed many times from my football possibility.  The last time Milan played the Champions League Final was in 2007, a triumph filtered through standard definition, calibrated necessarily by the mind's eye into speckless brilliance.  

It was as if I need to be roused to be able to register last week's Final, as if the absence of my own team from the competition has cob-webbed my faculties.  In February, I had written of the Scudetto dream; that fell away definitively by March.  What was left was not just the original goal of Champions League qualification, but also a more fundamental question of survival.  Financial health.  The ability to plan on a tight but at least not moneyless budget.  Sporting Director Paolo Maldini materialized whenever my fears would, whenever the league table started to look dicey, grim, reassuring in every interview that even without Champions League football, the project would continue.

But you knew you couldn't be satisfied with another disappointing season spun as success.  More pragmatically, you knew that renewals and loan options hinged on qualifying for UEFA's showpiece event. 

In the end, Milan finished second. They managed to beat every team in their peer group (Inter, Napoli, Atalanta, Juventus, Roma, and Lazio) at least once, including a thumping 3-0 win over the defending champions in Turin.  They managed 16 out of a possible 19 away wins, which is a league record. 

There are so many players, so many numbers, so many people to consider when discussing how a team with the youngest average age in Europe, assembled through bruising negotiations and pennies (relatively speaking), consisting of loanees, an almost 40-year-old Ibrahimovic, managed to do what it did this season.  The fanboy in me wants to answer with one name as being responsible for it all, Maldini; others will say, Ibra.  But there was much more to it.

For me, it was not crucial to write about each element that contributed to the success, but only the crescendo of success itself.  To know that if my team is headed in the right direction, so am I.

Somehow.

 

Dreams Of A Milanista Past The Half

There comes a time when you have no choice but to share your dream.  After twenty rounds, Milan still sit, somehow, at the top.  They did so after nineteen rounds as well, at the halfway point of the season, but I daren't have written this then, even though I had dared to dream much earlier.  The podium for the Winter Champions is laid down only in discourse, and after a bruising 3-0 defeat to Atalanta in the nineteenth round the title felt emptier than usual.

I had been anxious before the game against Bologna this past Saturday.  I feared it would defy what was on paper, all of Milan's work so far would falter in front of the heaving beast that is The Narrative, which has maintained that Milan are, at best, a third-wheel: Inter and Juventus have the better squads and over time it will tell.  The twentieth game, the start of the return fixtures, would show that the first half of the season had been a dream, a madman's dream, and in the second half Milan would find themselves in someone else's, walled out as the familiar Juventus cavalcade moved triumphantly ahead in the distance.

In these times, dreams compensate more than usual.  This Serie A season will be unwitnessed by fans in the flesh.  It will be asterisked for posterity as a perversion.  The noise of fans in stadia has been replaced by howls of players clipped in flight, the pantomime of a coach's protest by his bellowing--and it is on this stage that Milan have emerged as contenders. 

In a way it's fitting.  Milan's owners Elliott are used to surveying carnage before finding a position of advantage.  As the pandemic rages, Milan inoculates itself against financial and sporting ruin.  The wage bill has been slashed, players surplus to requirements have been moved on, there is no debt owed to banks, the fanatical line of buying only young players has been moderated to include old hands like Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Simon Kjaer, and a whole department dedicated to precise statistical analysis offers directors Paolo Maldini and Frederic Massara profiles that they then pursue in the market.

The result is that a team with one of the youngest average ages in Europe sits on top of a league that has always been suspicious of too much youth. Now, though, the suspicions have been momentarily diverted. 

If this had been a normal season, Milan's young players would have disintegrated under the pressure of a packed San Siro, some say. If they hadn't been awarded all of their penalties, they would sit third at best, often the same people say.

The first can't be proven; the second is tenuous, not even taken seriously by honest Inter or Juventus supporting journalists.  

No one can argue with the math, so they argue with the method.  Coach Stefano Pioli faces the snide line of questioning with customary grace, swatting away questions of penalties, reminding them that a team which has been sweeping almost all before them since July of last year isn't here by chance.  They have earned the points and the penalties (note: all but maybe two of Milan's fourteen penalties were blatant).

Supporting Milan isn't exactly a martyr's fate.  The fanbase of a club that has won the European Cup seven times and the league almost three times that forfeits the right to complain of lean years.  But in the interregnum between 2014 and now, when Milan didn't have the towering leadership of Ibrahimovic or the business stability, there was almost nothing to surrender at the halfway point.  Milan were almost always realistically out of contention for a Champions League spot after nineteen rounds, let alone the Scudetto.  

It feels strange as a Milan fan to have something at stake this far in the season.  To ease the pressure, the line publicly remains that finishing in the top four is the season's goal, but the editorial lines have already converged across Italian media.  Papers and podcasts of all political colour agree that Milan are among the favourites.

What you fear as a fan is the dream, preferring to defer it.  We'll see where we are after ten rounds, you said at the start of the season.  At round ten, you said fifteen.  At fifteen, nineteen.

You fear something ghostly, which periodically assumes contours: a disproportionate amount of injuries, COVID-19 cases that have reduced your key players to posting Instagram videos of themselves on stationary bikes at home, and the recent spat between Inter's Romelo Lukaku and Ibrahimovic during the Coppa Italia. 

At first glance the spat had all the hallmarks of how footballers square up--like rams they touch heads, sometimes falling, sometimes keeping their balance and at least some dignity, as was the case here. But without the noise of the fans drowning out the verbal exchange you heard everything.

No need to rehash it further, but the (non) issue has been typically exaggerated in the Italian media, and the talk of a ban on both (possibly extending into the league) strikes at that part of you that has started to believe.

That belief has been steadily building, collapsing, rebuilding, resurrecting itself again and again.  For every slip, there is a wonder Rafael Leao goal (one of which was the fastest to have ever been scored across Europe's top five leagues); for every story that heaps doubt on the club, there is one that heaps praise.  Milan's season has bloomed during a time of disease, and it therefore feels like a full-blooded rebirth.

Davide Calabria, Theo Hernandez, Franck Kessie, Ismael Bennacer, Ante Rebic, and the man who always supplies the key, Hakan Calhanoglu--there is so much to look forward to at last.  

For now, you tell yourself what they tell you: finish in the Champions League places.  But the January window that added a player like Mario Mandzukic (among others) tells you something else.

Hopeful, you look towards May, still a flicker in the distance.

Serie A Season Preview: More To It Than Juventus

Before a ball is kicked to start a season, the league table reads like a perfect democracy.  Everyone equal, facing discrimination only on the basis of alphabetical order. Sere A kicks off this weekend, but Atalanta are already champions of Italy after 0 games played.

Put aside your partisanship and enjoy the pristine table while you can.  Teams and fans, delude yourselves with visions of triumph now because the illusion will begin to lift after a dozen matchdays.

By then, the table will start to tell familiar stories of the haves and have-nots and the tundra that yawns between them.

Maybe it will be different this time. Maybe Juventus will not have sown up the title by Christmas; maybe the teams that look like relegation candidates right now (Verona, Lecce) will be flirting with mid-table bliss.

After the last eight seasons, I have learned to enjoy Serie A's subplots more than the hackneyed main one. The fight for European spots or salvation.  The surprise players or teams. A near-decade of black-and-white Juventus dominance has bestowed upon me nuance, a shade of gray through which I can appreciate the undeniable progress Serie A has made as a whole and teams like Atalanta and Torino have made in particular.

Ready for battle: Antonio Conte

This season, the prevailing opinion is that Inter are the new anti-Juve. Both teams have new coaches, but there is a palpable belief that while Juventus coach Maurizio Sarri fiddles and fine-tunes, Antonio Conte's knuckle-down approach at Inter will yield results quicker.  And maybe that will be enough for Inter to steal a start on Juve that will prove unassailable in the end.

You go through the well-rehearsed arguments all the time. How Romelo Lukaku will be the missing piece for Inter on the field, how Cristiano Ronaldo will "SIUUUU" himself and his team to glory, how Napoli coach Carlo Ancelotti will finally steer Napoli to the Scudetto because of continuity.  All of  this matters, of course, and I am invested in the league's denouement, but so much like the following compels me even more.

Decreto Crescita Law: Italy's Rientro dei Cervelli

Former Milan CEO Adriano Galliani never missed the opportunity to lower everyone's  expectations near the end of his tenure. When pressed upon Milan's relatively low-key mercato or Italy's inability to attract the top talent, he would list off a variety of reasons, and one of them was the country's unfavourable tax law.

Those laws will change in 2020. Italy has passed a new law, Decreto Crescita (or Growth Decree), in a bid to attract talent from overseas into various sectors of the economy--and football will also benefit. I won't go through the finer points, but in a nutshell Italian teams will have to pay significantly lower taxes on the salaries of players who have not lived in Italy for the last 2 years (Italian or foreign).  It is a bid to bring back to Italy the brains (Rientro dei Cervelli literally translates to return of the brains) it has been missing and losing for years. 

Purple Ribery

The benefits of the law are already being seen. Fiorentina signed Franck Ribery from Bayern Munich on a free transfer and are going to pay him 4 million euros net, capitalizing on the new legislation to land a high-profile signing like the Frenchman.

Ribery laps up the adulation in Florence

While the media speculated all summer about Federico Chiesa's departure to Juventus, Fiorentina's new Calabrian-born American billionaire owner Rocco Commisso had other ideas. Ribery, even at 36, is a statement signing for Fiorentina, a type of signing their fans had craved for years but never saw under the previous owners, the Della Valle family.


The Thinking Man's Coach: Marco Giampaolo

New Milan coach Marco Giampaolo is nothing if not cerebral.  Arrigo Sacchi gushes over him. Journalists have so far given him a deferential respect. Unkempt and disarmingly calm in most pre-season press conferences, Giampaolo has given the impression of a man who prefers to toil within as he finds the formula that can make Milan tick. He is the first coach since Massimiliano Allegri, who left in 2014, who is not an ex-Milan player. Already that represents a bright point for a club that has seen little or no success with experiments like Filippo Inzaghi, Clarence Seedorf, and Gennaro Gattuso on the bench. 

Giampaolo is a man driven by his methods, always ready to point out to journalists that he will throw in new signings like Ismael Bennacer and Rafael Leao when they have learned the movements of the new team.  Milan finally have a bonafide coach.  And the Champions League is a must after having missed out on it by one point last season.

Balotelli returns to Brescia

Mario Balotelli is back. This time to represent Brescia, the city where he also grew up from the age of 2. It is remarkable that while Balotelli negotiated life in France's Ligue 1, he was still a vexed topic in Italy, finding himself as part of discussions around the national team and still referred to as a cautionary tale. 

Balotelli will always be the locus of all Italian football's desires and anxieties it seems. He is variously saviour and scapegoat, but never forgotten.  Balo's partnership with Alfredo Donnarumma up front at Brescia will make for an intriguing season.


In short, there is more to it than what's at the top.  Serie A, after a long time, looks competitive, compelling top to bottom. The Scudetto struggle is merely a sideshow.

Whatever happens at the end of the season, enjoy the ride.  Even if you feel Juventus winning the title is a foregone conclusion.

Genoa and Samp Must Rise

Check out my latest piece on football-italia:

https://www.football-italia.net/136920/genoa-and-samp-must-rise

Some Thoughts on Milan...

Unrealistic: Antonio Conte

You have to go back to the summer of 2015 to understand the predicament.  Then Milan president Silvio Berlusconi and his CEO Adriano Galliani laid out a project in front of former coach Carlo Ancelotti. Ancelotti deliberated, or respectfully pretended to, and said no.  Milan ended up with Sinisa Mihajlovic as coach, who did not make the impact that his tenure at Sampdoria had promised.

More than three years later, after a string of disappointing results, seemingly everyone around Milan is asking the question, "why don't we hire a big coach like Antonio Conte."  But they are likely to be disappointed like they were in 2015.  The fans who want Conte in place of current Milan coach and former club legend, Gennaro Gattuso, live in a parallel universe in which a) Conte would want to come coach Milan currently and b) UEFA's Financial Fair Play rules don't exist. To land a big name you need to have the ability to pay both for the name and the players he wants, when he wants. Not when you break even or reach the promised land of financial bliss. 

The January market will be telling and decisive. In my view, we’ll see Milan's financial restrictions laid bare. 

"When we bought Paqueta, UEFA sent us a warning letter," said Milan DS Leonardo today.  "It will be a market of opportunities."

The road is still long, in other words. The timing is unfortunate. Juventus resurrected themselves post-Calciopoli when FFP was basically a rumour. PSG/Manchester City when it was yet to be refined.

Milan have filed an appeal to TAS (the Court of Arbitration in Lausanne that also overturned their Europa League ban) against UEFA's verdict for breaching FFP rules.  The club's owners Elliott are litigious, bullish, but it depends how much they want to push UEFA.  Milan have two options: 1) flout the rules and litigate 2) fall in line and shrewdly move on the market.

In these circumstances, a coach like Conte will never come.  He started his career at Arezzo and has subsequently coached Juventus, Chelsea, and Italy; he doesn't need to cut his teeth anymore.

Until a Conte becomes a realistic target, Milan will stick to company men like Gattuso. They don’t ask for much, first of all. They also have the backing of the fans for a decent amount of time. If they manage results all the better. If they don’t, you look around and see alternatives like Roberto Donadoni, and hesitate. Rightly. 

Gattuso isn't Milan's best bet; he is practically Milan's only one. It's clear that apart from the coaching names being circulated in fantasy land, any other coach would simply be a lateral move--and in some cases worse.   

(As an aside, Gattuso also provokes the worst elements online and elsewhere not only to put their neuroses on display, but also their prejudice.  The bad patch had barely started, and people started to take shots at his Calabrianness.  Gattuso was offered a long term contract by Massimiliano Mirabelli, the director of sport who left with the former Chinese ownership.  He was also Calabrian.  This is license, you see.  People ridicule Gattuso for his cliche-laden press conferences during which his linguistic shortcomings become plainly evident, for phrases like si tocca con mano (you can feel it), which features almost every time.)

"Gattuso is not under discussion, even if he knows we expect more," Paolo Maldini said today.  

If there were viable alternatives, I, too, would replace Gattuso. But not with, with all due respect, Francesco Guidolin or Paulo Sousa. 

That failed attempt to land Ancelotti in 2015 is precisely the issue still: Milan needs a big-time coach but can't attract one.  Until it can, it is best to support who we have.  Forza Milan!

No Thank You, Prime Minister

Salvini (left) and Gattuso

"Dino Zoff behaved like an amateur," former PM Silvio Berlusconi said of the former coach after Italy's soul-crushing Euro2000 Final defeat to France. "He left Zinedine Zidane completely open."

The word dilettante (amateur) stung Zoff so much so that he resigned as coach a few days later, saying that he didn't need to "take lessons in dignity from Berlusconi."

He needn't have taken footballing lessons from the man either.  Zidane was cancelled out by an excellent Italy.  The goal came in the last few seconds of the game when French goalkeeper Fabian Barthes launched a hopeful ball that bounced off Fabio Cannavaro's head and into the path of Sylvain Wiltord, who put it past Francesco Toldo from a tight angle.  Either Berlusconi didn't watch the game, or he felt compelled to say anything, something, to be part of the conversation.

Throughout his Milan presidency, Berlusconi offered unsolicited advice to his coaches and players, some so ludicrous that you could almost hear the journalists chuckling when asking the various Milan coaches their opinion of the president's umpteenth formation advice.  

It wasn't as if Berlusconi was always wrong, and it wasn't as if he didn't deserve any deference.  But it was the timing, the simplicity, the, well, amateur nature of his advice that at once rankled and amused.

Why does this matter after eighteen years? Well, Italy's deputy PM, Matteo Salvini, once an ally of Berlusconi, is, unfortunately, a Milan fan.  He has no formal association with the team, but he airs his opinions on it and Milan coach, Gennaro Gattuso, seemingly every week.

The final straw seemed to have arrived after Milan's ultimately valuable 1-1 draw with Lazio in Rome. 

"Why didn't Gattuso make substitutions?" asked Salvini.  "You could see our players were spent."

Lazio's equalizer came in the 94th minute.  Salvini's opinion in the 96th.  It was the kind of facile criticism  that the twitterati subsist on.  

Gattuso finally had had enough. 

"As an Italian I could say a lot to Salvini and all the problems in our country," he said. "This isn't the first time, he seems to talk about Milan a lot."
Salvini retreated, and praised Gattuso, saying "he had only spoken as a fan." The self-deprecation arrived too late.

Political figures weighing in on sporting matters isn't peculiar to Italy, but the significance given to them in the media is rarer to find in other countries.  Salvini's and Berlusconi's comments are a provocation, an overreach. Would Salvini tolerate a public figure like Gattuso giving a potentially unflattering verdict of his leadership? Given Salvini's tendencies in general, I'd hazard a guess that he would not.

What irritates the common fan who suffers with the team, who agonizes over formations is not that Salvini or Berlusconi gives their opinion; it's more that those opinions are crude and unsophisticated.  The ordinary fan expects something extraordinary.  In short, something more than what an amateur could manage. 

On France Football's Recognition of Cutrone & Donna

Patrick Cutrone (left) and Gianluigi Donnarumma of Milan

If you don't look hard enough, you may miss it.  But it's there. Palpable. Even empirical.

In a year during which the Italian national team failed to qualify for the World Cup, the Italian league flourishes, providing spectacle and competitiveness.  

The numbers support the talk of resurgence.  For a brief twenty-four hours last week, Serie A overtook the Premier League in the UEFA ranking to sit in second behind Spain.  The lead evaporated when Lazio lost to Eintracht Frankfurt the next day, but the gauntlet for now matters more than the math.  Inter had dispatched Tottenham on the first matchday, and, on the second, Napoli nibbled at Liverpool until they made a hole big enough for Lorenzo Insigne to flit through in the last minute and score.  Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk described it as the only deserved result for his club so far this season.  Coach Jurgen Klopp concurred.

But results and ranking can be fleeting.  Serie A still has a self-esteem problem, a kind of weird inferiority complex, where foreign is good, and domestic bad.  Nowhere is this more evident than how quickly commentators and fans berate up-and-coming youngsters for mistakes.  Foibles quickly become character flaws in Serie A; a misstep a pathology. 

The journey from predestinato (predestined) to sopravvalutato (overrated) can be brutally swift.  To emerge from this crucible the way Cutrone and Donnarumma have is a Herculean task.

France Football released the Kopa Trophy list of the ten best players under the age of twenty-one yesterday, and three players from Serie A are on it, making it the most well-represented league.  The presence of Roma's Justin Kluivert is noteworthy, but not as remarkable as the fact that Milan are the only club to contribute more than one player: goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma and striker Patrick Cutrone. 

Donnarumma is 19 and Cutrone 20.  Both have risen to stardom in front of an exacting San Siro public, and both are emblematic of former president Silvio Berlusconi's credo liberally quoted and requoted at the tail-end of his reign as club president--a Milan, young and Italian.  

Now, it would be an absolute scandal if France's and PSG's Kylian Mbappe didn't win in December.  He will, of course, but the presence of Cutrone and Donnarumma is a rejoinder to critics both in Italy and abroad.  

Cutrone is averaging an astonishing 0.40 goals per game--higher than Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo managed at the same age.  Donnarumma has already inherited the number 1 spot from Gianluigi Buffon for the Italian national team.  Both players commit errors.  Donnarumma can be clumsy when playing the ball with his feet; Cutrone can sometimes take the wrong option in front of goal.  

But these nominations remind us that growing pains and pure quality are not mutually exclusive, and we need to have a more nuanced and layered understanding of player development.  Despite of all the refinement he lacked on the field, Milan coach Gennaro Gattuso has treated the fragile egos and psychology of both players expertly, standing sentinel between the media and his charges.  Cutrone and Donnarumma are not his inventions, but they are his and Italian football's patrimonio (heritage).  They are here, and they should be loved, protected, and, yes, celebrated.

List in full:

  1. Houssem Aouar (Lyon and France)
  2. Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool and England)
  3. Patrick Cutrone (AC Milan and Italy)
  4. Ritsu Doan (Groningen and Japan)
  5. Gianluigi Donnarumma (AC Milan and Italy)
  6. Amadou Haidara (RB Salzburg and Mali)
  7. Justin Kluivert (AS Roma and Netherlands)
  8. Kylian Mbappe (Paris Saint-Germain and France)
  9. Christian Pulisic (Borussia Dortmund and USA)
10. Rodrygo (Santos and Brazil)

Cristiano Ronaldo, Balconies, and Parma: Why Everyone Should Watch Serie A

The name was almost whispered at first.  Cristiano Ronaldo.  One source reported it, and then slowly others started falling in line.  It was possible.  Ronaldo could play for Juventus.  Somehow, the directors would shuffle salaries and players around to bring from Madrid the most recognizable and marketable athlete in any sport to Turin.

When Ronaldo finally did arrive at the Allianz Stadium, bronze from the Greek sun, a model of sartorial perfection, to face the media, you knew this was big.  You always did, but he made absolutely sure.

"I am not like other players my age," the 33-year-old Ronaldo said, and the body fat level test later confirmed.  "Many in my stage of their career go to China or somewhere else to play."

Ronaldo chose Italy after unparalleled success in Spain.  This isn't a player on the wane, a superstar who wants to ease himself into a life of poolside indolence.  No, Ronaldo wants to win in Italy, Juventus, and Serie A.

It is a coup for the league.  That's how non-Juventus fans consoled themselves, but it's true.  Ronaldo's arrival raises the bar. For everyone.  For his teammate Paulo Dybala.  For the league's top defenders like Roma's Kostas Manolas and Milan's Alessio Romagnoli.  Even for Frosinone defender Emanuele Terranova, against whom Ronaldo will be facing off 80 kms outside of Rome at least once this upcoming season.

I have enjoyed experts on EPL-centric panels trying to figure out how it all happened.  Why Juventus? Why Italy? How can it be that Ronaldo spurned the chance to go back to Manchester United?

I love it. I love hate-watching the parochialism, the toe-curling comments from so-called experts who still think Roma fluked a semifinal appearance in the Champions League. It warms my heart. 

If they had been paying attention the signs of Italy's ascent have been there.  During the 2014-15 season, the more thoughtful English journalists took note of Juventus's run to the Champions League Final, of the huge success of Italian clubs in the Europa League.  In the past few years, Napoli's fluent play has made an impact to the extent that Maurizio Sarri is now coach of Chelsea.

It's a paradox that while EPL partisans dismiss if not bash Italian football, the top English clubs yearn for Italian coaches.  Ranieri, Ancelotti, Conte, Allegri are all coaches that EPL teams have either employed or have come very close to employing. 

Still not convinced?

Fine, you must be a numbers person.  Look at the UEFA coefficient ranking for countries--Serie A has surpassed the Bundesliga and is closing in on England, who sit uncomfortably in second place.

Ronaldo's arrival is a culmination of the "good things" that Serie A has been doing, a living,breathing, grinning exclamation point, a player that could finally help Juventus take that one final step and win the Champions League.

Juventus fans claim the signing as their own, and so they should.  It is a testament to Juventus's superb business acumen and vision that Ronaldo was ever possible.  To outsiders, the Portuguese star's signing is the only thing worth talking about this summer in Serie A.  But Milan, Inter and Napoli have all been at work as well.

Napoli brought in Carlo Ancelotti as coach after Sarri left to Chelsea.  A Champions League winning coach, Ancelotti is a star signing; Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis will be even more smug next year. 

Then there is Inter, who pounced on Roma's Radja Nainggolan

Carlo Anceotti (left) and Aurelio De Laurentiis

among others to bolster their midfield, and who are rumoured to be after Real Madrid's Luka Modric.  Yes, you read that right--Modric.

Milan have woken up from the nightmare of their Chinese ownership and now have former player Leonardo and former legend Paolo Maldini in the management.  Oh, and the best striker in the league, Gonzalo Higuain, will lead the attack.  He came in alongside Mattia Caldara in a swap deal that saw Leonardo Bonucci return to Juventus.

To ratchet up the nostalgia, Higuain and Caldara waved to the fans from a balcony in the Piazza Duomo in Milan.  To me, it recalled Milan's signing of Alessandro Nesta in 2002, or Ronaldo's presentation at Inter in 1997.

Other clubs have been making the headlines as well.  Parma have returned to Serie A after fighting off their second bankruptcy.  Not romantic enough to have one of the sette sorelle (the seven sisters of Italian football, Milan, Juventus, Inter, Roma, Lazio, Fiorentina, Napoli, and Parma) back in Serie A? Consider that defender Alessandro Lucarelli, 41, stuck with the club through the trials of Serie D and administration, retiring just this past season.  

A little further south, newly promoted Frosinone will play in their newly built stadium, Stadio Benito Stirpe, and, at the time of writing, Lazio and Fiorentina have managed to keep hold of their star players like Ciro Immobile and Federico Chiesa.

It has been a glorious summer in Italy.  It is almost as if the league decided to compensate for the national team's failure to qualify for the World Cup.  A lot is happening apart from Ronaldo.  This will be the most exciting Serie A season in a long, long time. 

If you're tired of the familiar villainy of Manchester United coach Jose Mourinho, the same old faces that he pulls in press conferences, the painfully false modesty of Manchester city coach Pep Guardiola, the duopoly of Real Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, the predictability of a Bayern Munich triumph in Germany, give Serie A a try.  Sure, Juventus have won the last seven Scudetti, but Serie A was the only top league that still had more than one team fighting for the championship two rounds from the end last year (Napoli and Juventus).  This year, it feels maybe, despite Ronaldo, Juventus's hegemony just may be at risk.

You can whisper it for now, and let's see if it becomes reality.

World Cup 2018 Review: Italy and The Dangerous Safety of Nostalgia

Despair and triumph: Baggio 1994 and Mbappe 2018

So, after twenty years, France are champions of the world again, and Croatia have played in their first Final.  What's not to be happy about? Well, the handball decision on Ivan Perisic for one, but let's put that aside for now.

I have enjoyed this absorbing World Cup, but throughout its course I have also looked for refuge in memories of past Italian campaigns.  It's a coping mechanism, an attempt to find a footing in the discourse and the events so inexorably not about the team I support.  

But is it harmless to retire every now and then from a reality that is unfolding without you, that is indifferent to your yearnings? The refuge of nostalgia is a tenuous one, a dangerous one, a hovel always on the brink of collapse.  

Tomorrow will mark twenty-four years since Roberto Baggio skied the decisive penalty against Brazil in the World Cup Final.  It was, at that time, a moment that reduced me to tears.  Now, it 's a memory that marks in my mind not Italian defeat, but supremacy dashed only by bad luck.  It was only penalties that kept Italy from beating Brazil on that sweltering Pasadena day.  I can explain that defeat away, identify it as a comforting counterpoint to what is the current state of Gli Azzurri.

A World Cup has just finished without Italy in it, a World Cup that was by any standard one of the most compelling ones in recent memory.  What value does nostalgia have in the face of this sneering, teeth-baring reality?  I would argue that it's placebo more than antidote, a vial of pills that comes without direction and takes you in no particular one either.   You cast your mind back to glory, linger for a moment, only to be jolted back to face reality: Kylian Mbappe and not Patrick Cutrone, Paul Pogba and not Marco Verratti. 

The French football system has won in Russia, and the Italian system was only to be found in faint traces, in the boots of Croats like Marcelo Brozovic of Inter and Mario Mandzukic of Juventus.  Clairefontaine has outstripped Coverciano: that should be the tearful point of departure from which coach Roberto Mancini can begin to fashion the raw material at his disposal to something approaching an Italian team worthy of the name.  

France has now played five major finals in the last twenty years, winning three of them.  Italy has played three in that same period, winning just one.  These two nations are not poles apart, but the question at the heart of all of this is what qualities will Italian football rely on to compensate for a lack of an outstanding generation? 

In February of this year, Juventus defender Giorgio Chiellini accused former Barcelona and current Manchester City coach Pep Guardiola of ruining Italian football because all Italian coaches try to imitate him.  It was a stretch, but he was broadly correct.  It has come to the point where  Napoli are content with being considered Barcelona-lite, the ones who pass the ball around beautifully only to lose valiantly. 

France have turned the page because they can.  They have the quality.  But consider that only when they played with Olivier Giroud up front this World Cup were they able to strike a balance, so that other more talented individuals on their team could express themselves.  It was a tweak, a ploy that coach Didier Deschamps persisted with after the first group game despite Giroud managing zero shots on target all tournament.  Deschamps didn't solve the lack of output with more quality, but less.

It is this ability to flirt with paradox that Italian football lacks currently, an ability it cheerfully flaunted in the past.  On the eve of Euro2000, everyone lamented the lack of quality Italy had.  They reached the Final.  Similarly, the 2006 team was arguably less equipped than the 2002 one, but they won the World Cup with Palermo's Fabio Grosso (who? casual fans asked at the time) winning the semi-final and converting that penalty in the Final.

I take Chiellini's point.  Imitation of others is not the way ahead, but neither is trying to imitate a past version of yourself.  Former coach Antonio Conte worked with the constraints of the current generation and brought Italy to the cusp of qualifying for the Euro2016 semi-finals.  

We can look back longingly to the blurry-edged Azzurri memories, but this French generation agitated against precisely that.  As Andrew Hussey writes in the Guardian, they didn't want middle-aged white males telling them about the 1998 victory anymore.  They wanted their own memories; to create their own experiences. 

So did Croatia.  Their defender Dejan Lovren said that this Croatia team can eclipse the vaunted one of 1998 that reached the semi-finals--and they did.

Nostalgia can at once motivate and paralyze.  It can clarify and distort.  In a world where politicians and pundits profit from people's selective memories, from vignettes about how things used to be before these people arrived, nostalgia should be handled responsibly. 

I sign off, then, with a Forza Azzurri! and a Andiamo avanti! Let's Go Azzurri! We go ahead!  We must.

Manufacturing Calcio Memories

Marco Tardelli unleashes after scoring in the 1982 Final

What if a memory that you cherish, a memory that you remember with stunning clarity, is not really yours? What if you never made it?  I have a few of these calcio memories tucked away in the bank.  They are like false currency, but only upon closer inspection do they reveal themselves to be counterfeit.

I was three when Italy won the 1982 World Cup in Spain, when Marco Tardelli roared with abandon in the final against West Germany, when coach Enzo Bearzot played cards with the then Italian president Alessando Pertini, Dino Zoff, a moustachioed Franco Causio, and, of course, the World Cup itself--gold, impassive, self-satisfied.

By all accounts, I was more interested then in Ernie's antics on Sesame Street, or Scooby Doo's sleuth work that seemed just like antics to me, or not disgracing myself during a meal.  I had different priorities back then positioned as I was in that painfully irrecoverable space between consciousness and lucidity (I don't drink).

Why then do I remember the 1982 World Cup? What right do I have to Tardelli's facial contortions, to Pertini raising his arms in glee after Italy's third goal in the Final? 

The answer reprimands you: you consumed the images later and you stole them for yourself.  They are now part of an iconography that you have internalized and fabricated in parts.  You have swallowed falsehoods along with truth.   

My writing here often deals with memory.  In the About section I write about how I became an Italian football fan:

"For many years, one of my indelible memories of Italian football was, in fact, mis-remembered.

Italia'90 had many moments that could lodge in a young football fan's mind.  There was Roberto Baggio's flight through the hapless team of what was then Czechoslovakia, or Salvatore Schillaci's bug-eyed celebrations after scoring a goal.  But the most enduring memory I have is of a tearful Aldo Serena sinking to his knees after missing a penalty against Argentina in the semi-final. 

The only problem is the man doing the sinking was Milan's Roberto Donadoni, who had missed a penalty before Serena.  I had, as I recently found out, unwittingly conflated Donadoni's dejection with Serena's; or, perhaps my Rossonero disposition had led me over the years to ascribe the most defeated gesture of that bitter penalty shoot-out loss to Serena, who was then at Inter and who had enjoyed his best years there as well.  Whatever and whomever, the net effect of Italia'90 and its pains and tears was that I was an Italy fan for life."

From left to right: Zoff, Causio, Pertini, Bearzot

Mis-remembering rewarded me with calcio, a life-long gift.  But when does mis-remembering dangerously shade into manufacturing? Each flicker of an image or footage from 1982 that has insinuated itself into my memory now passes itself off as lived or seen experience.

I was merely alive in 1982, but that seems to have given me license.  I have seen Gianni Rivera help Italy to the 1970 Final on video, but that Italy was older than I am.  I have seen black and white pictures of the Italian squads of 1934 and 1938, but that Italy was older than my father.  The one from 1982 though sticks, and not just because Italy won, but because it happened around the same time I did.

This seems like vanity that I can't apologize for.  I am richer because of these memories, and it is only when I hold them up to the light of the 1990 World Cup, the 1994 one, the 1998 one, and the 2006 one do I realize that something about them is different--perhaps counterfeit, but, somehow, not devalued. 

So, when I say to my friends, "I don't really remember the 1982 World Cup, so 2006 was something special" it is at once a lie and the truth.

On this day, thirty-six years ago, Italy won its third World Cup, a triumph that I at once remember and don't.

Il Cielo e Azzurro Sopra Berlino. Siamo Campioni Del Mondo!

said Marco Civoli, on this day, 12 years ago...

When Third Place Meant Something to Me: Italy vs England

The World Cup's most pointless exercise is the third place game. Italy and England had both experienced heartbreaking defeats to Argentina and Germany in the semi-finals of the 1990 World Cup.

Nonetheless, this was the first World Cup that I can say I watched knowing what was going on (I was too young for 1986).  I had already shed tears  in the semi-final, and I wanted a measure of redemption by watching Italy beat England.

Seventy minutes passed in Bari before Italy broke through. England goalkeeper Peter Shilton, playing in his last international game, fumbled a ball in the penalty box, and Roberto Baggio pounced on it.  The ball rolled to Salvatore Schillaci, who evaded a challenge and passed for Baggio to shoot high into the net.

David Platt equalized for England moments later with a towering header, but Baggio and Schillaci combined again to give Italy the victory.  Baggio went on an irresistible run through the field, and passed for Schillaci, who was fouled in the box.

Schillaci got up and stroked the ball past Shilton to end as the tournament's top scorer with six goals.  It was a victory that I celebrated with some enthusiasm, as I watched my heroes deservedly take Italy to a high finish in the tournament.

Baggio, Mussi and Benarrivo Jolt Italy Into Life

Somehow, you kept believing.  It couldn't end like this, could it?

Ten-man Italy were wilting at the Foxboro stadium in Boston against Nigeria.  

The drama had been perfectly Italian, replete with controversy, fluffed lines, and stage fright.  Nigeria had taken a lead in the 26th minute from a nothing corner.  Birthday boy Gianfranco Zola had been sent off for a nothing foul in the 76th (the tiny Sardinian had made faces, had held himself, had dropped down to his knees at the red card decision; in short, he had behaved as any kid would have after a spoiled party).  The Italians were doing nothing really except disintegrating.  Going nowhere except for the second round exit at the 1994 World Cup. 1-0 down with time running out.

But Roberto Baggio was still there.  It was all still possible.  Somehow, you kept believing.

Then in the 89th minute, it happened

Torino defender Roberto Mussi found himself but, more crucially, Baggio in the box.  He made a quick pass, and Baggio stroked the ball right into the bottom corner of the goal.  

It was 1-1.  The psychology of the game had shifted.

In extra-time, Parma's Antonio Benarrivo won a penalty that Baggio scored off the post.  Italy had scraped by.

Another remarkable detail about the victory was that aside from Baggio, two defenders had made the difference.  First, Mussi's enterprising movement had found Baggio in the penalty area, and secondly, Bennarivo's threat had forced a penalty.

Italy would march on thanks to those two as well.

On this day, twenty-four years ago. 

Andiamo a Berlino (Beppe): Grosso. Del Piero. Final.

Fabio Grosso was crying as he wheeled away.  He whizzed past teammates trying to get a hold of him; he wagged his finger in total incredulity, as if to say no, no, it can't be.  Finally, he was reined in, a heap of Italian players exulting with him.

That goal ended Germany and put Italy in the Final.  That unlikely Grosso strike of perfect geometry finished off the World Cup hosts in Dortmund.

But Alessandro Del Piero made absolutely sure.  People will most likely remember Grosso's goal over Del Piero's.  But not me.

In my calculations, both goals had equal weight.  

Sure, Grosso's was technically the winner, but Del Piero's goal was six years in the making.  In the Euro2000 Final against France, he found himself twice in a position to finish the game off.  Twice he failed, and France eventually went on to win.

This time he didn't. 

Fabio Cannavaro intercepted the ball, passing to Francesco Totti, who found Alberto Gilardino, who provided a quick pass for a Del Piero surging into the penalty box.

What would he do with the ball? The finish looked difficult, but Del Piero managed it, curling the ball past a defeated, exasperated Jens Lehmann in the German goal.

It was 2-0. Del Piero unleashed in celebration.  This time Del Piero didn't miss.

It is those moments of redemption that stick out for me.  I remember Roberto Baggio's penalty against France in the 1998 World Cup quarterfinal shootout not because it was an exceptional penalty, but because of what Baggio did after scoring it.  

He looked at the crowd then lowered his eyes while raising his finger to his lips, as if to silence the voices that blared inside of him.  He was having a word with himself.  He had redeemed himself partially for the miss in the Final against Brazil four years earlier. Things made a little more sense again.  He still knew how to kick a ball in the right direction.

And so it was with Del Piero.  Maybe the Euro2000 Final was just a bitter, insignificant counterpoint in his mind as he celebrated, but the catharsis owed its intensity to the failure of six years earlier.  Del Piero was red with ecstatic rage.

Fabio Caressa yelled, "ANDIAMO A BERLINO Beppe!" to his co-commentator Giuseppe Bergomi.  We are going to Berlin, Beppe!

And so Gli Azzurri were.

On this day, twelve years ago.

Luca Toni Arrives, Zambrotta Shines, and Pessottino Siamo Con Te

Zambrotta celebrates after opening the scoring against Ukraine

Luca Toni had not yet arrived in Germany.  He was hard to miss at 6'5".  He was there to be sure.  But he had not yet really justified his position as the forward of choice yet.

There was that shot that he had thumped against the crossbar against Ghana in Italy's opening game of the 2006 World Cup, but precious little else.

It was time.  The press was hoping that he would now break out as Paolo Rossi had in 1982.  The quarter-finals of the World Cup seemed like the perfect opportunity.

It was June 30, 2006.  Italy were facing Andriy Shevchenko's Ukraine.  Gianluca Zambrotta's rasping low shot had given them an early lead. 

But things were tense.

Somehow Ukraine had failed to score after a scramble in front of Italy's goal.  Their coach Oleh Blokhin stood on the sidelines dumbfounded. 

Italy had to put the game beyond reach, and what better person to do that than the tallest man on the team?

Toni struck twice in ten minutes.  First,  in the 59th minute, he headed home a sumptuously weighted cross from Francesco Totti, and secondly, in the 69th minute, he tapped in a pass by Zambrotta, who had done excellently to get past Ukraine's defenders in the box.

It was 3-0.  Everyone raved about Toni, but it was also Zambrotta's shining moment in the World Cup.  His performance was remarkable.  He scored only his second goal for the Azzurri and provided the assist to seal the victory.

For a moment, just for a moment, you forgot the football scandal, Calciopoli,  raging on back in Italy.  The proposed penalties, the cost, so far had been administrative. Rumours of relegation for the teams involved.  Points deduction.

It wasn't until former Juventus player Gianluca Pessotto jumped from a window in an apparent suicide attempt that the devastating impact of the scandal came into focus.  Pessotto survived.  On that miserable day, Italy captain Fabio Cannavaro was told to cut a press conference short after the news had began to filter in.  It was perhaps the most poignant moment of the World Cup up until that point.

Cannavaro and Zambrotta, who had both been Pessotto's teammates at Juventus during the season that had just ended, held up an Italy flag at the end of the victory against Ukraine with the words Pessottino siamo con te (Pessotto we are with you) written across it.

On this day, twelve years ago.

Enter Francesco Totti

"Io non sono un mezzo giocatore."

"I am not half a player."

Seemed like a reasonable thing for Francesco Totti to say after cannoning home the winning goal from the penalty spot in Italy's Round of 16 encounter against Australia.

Totti was there, whole, not a fraction, and not a fraction less, when he stepped up to face Australian goalkeeper Marc Schwarzer. 

The problem was the media didn't quite believe the evidence.  Just four months previous to June 26, 2006, Empoli's Richard Vanigli had broken Totti's fibula in a Serie A game.  Not intentionally, of course, but there Totti was, clutching his ankle, and NOT writhing in agony, which confirmed to me that it was serious. 

When the diagnosis came in later, I anxiously recalled how long it had taken me to recover from a broken fibula a couple of years previously.  6-8 weeks, I thought.  But it seemed Totti's ligaments were involved too. But maybe that would be offset by the standard of care he would receive?

Over the ensuing weeks, the Italian media ensured they kept me apprised of Totti's convalescence. The race was on to heal for the World Cup.  There Totti was smiling in a picture from the hospital bed.  There Totti was wearing a bulky cast in the stands, taking in a Serie A game with partner Ilary Blasi.

He made it for the World Cup, and Marcello Lippi started him in Italy's 2-0 win against Ghana, but Mauro Camoranesi came on for him in the 56th minute.

The criticism took shape.  Was Totti a liability?  Was he picked because of his name, and, really, he was still not himself, but only half of what he could be?

Totti had a chance to issue one rejoinder at least--emphatically, decisively--from the penalty spot.  It was the third minute of injury time, and 10-man Italy looked to be heading into extra-time against Guus Hiddink's Australia.  Guus Hiddink, the man who four years earlier had been the architect of Italian embarrassment.  His South Korea had managed extra-time against Italy, and had won.  Then, Totti had been sent off to leave Italy playing with ten men.  On June 22, 2006 Marco Materazzi had for Italy.

The symmetry of the situation increased the pressure. 

The penalty had been won by Fabio Grosso. Generously, the Australians would contend.

It didn't matter to Italy.  Totti stepped up. 

It took an eternity to set the ball up.

The referee fussed about the placement (correctly, Totti would later admit).

Goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon turned away, not able to look (as he so often does).

The camera honed in on Totti's eyes, slightly squinting in the sun and from the focus.

But what would he do? How would he kick it? This is a man, after all, who at the age of only 23 was audacious enough to fool Edwin Van Der Saar with a panenka or cucchiaio from the penalty spot. And that in a semi-final of the European Championships no less.

"I thought about doing it," Totti later admitted.  "But it was hot."

He looked at the referee once more to see if he had complied with everything.

And then, he blasted a penalty that gave Schwarzer no chance.

It was 1-0. Italy were through. Totti sucked his thumb in celebration. 

Whole again, defiant against the media, ready to show off his knowledge of fractions: "Today, at least for quarter of an hour, I was a complete player."

You were, Francesco.  You were.

On this day, 12 years ago.