Sad; Obliterating Perception

True to Italian form, the Azzurri displayed perplexing form at the 2010 World Cup. It took until the last 15 minutes of the third game for them to finally get in gear; driven by fear no doubt. Still, they established the ground game and showed they can play with skill. But it was too little, too late. Ironically, the bedrock of Italian soccer is its defense and it was hopelessly dysfunctional this time around. It reminds me of 1986 the last they defended their title. Shadows were on the field. The scary thing is if the back up goalie makes one save, and the Quagliarella goal stands (as it easily could have), I'm not writing this post. Nonetheless, they played poorly and didn't deserve it - despite peppering 40 shots at the net hitting the target 15 times in two games. It wasn't our year.

I don't blame the players - entirely. If there ever was a time where the coach is fully to blame it's this one. Marcello Lippi simply left me (and the entire Italian soccer community) speechless with his handling and selection of the national team. Half the players taken were way past their prime; as if Italy was a country with no talent to choose from. And therein lies my disappointment. The players left behind could have gone deep in the tournament. At the very least it would have been a great experience. Instead, our future stars lose four years because of Lippi putting his own interest above the team. He played politics and let personal trivialities get in the way of putting together a real team.

The World Cup is a place to showcase your talent. People who don't follow Italian soccer (and in my opinion it's their loss), came away asking, "is this the best Italy has to offer?" Lippi presented a skewed image of Italian soccer. If you're a fan of the Azzurri, you know what I mean. Don't make me list the players who should have been in South Africa. Lippi over rated experience over youth; personality over talent. He had no ideas, no tactics. He was still fiddling around with them at the World Cup! He had FOUR YEARS to prepare!

Truth is, we knew this team was sunk in 2007 at the Confederations Cup. We all saw it with our own two eyes. It screamed passing the torch to the young players. The qualifying campaign was mediocre at best and Euro 2008 a pure mess.

Above all, above all, what also blows my mind is Lippi admitted he didn't think he could win in 2010. Obviously this negative energy flowed onto his players. Which begs the question: If he thought this, why didn't he step down? Why bring the legendary Azzurri to their knees?

He capped off the poor performance by not shaking hands with the Slovak coach Weiss storming off instead. It wasn't quite a Domenech moment but it wasn't very classy and sporting of him. His hubris was the downfall of the team.

Meh. They'll be back in four years. Contrary to belief among Azzurri bashers, the pipeline is loaded with talent. They just need a chance. Let's hope the Cesare Prandelli era will see less bull politics we saw under Arrigo Sacchi, Cesare Maldini and now Marcello Lippi.

***

Speaking of bashers, I've grown a tad tired of them. One poster said, "Italy is the only team who dives!" Others made similar rubbish assertions but how to debunk the perception! It's hard enough to do it politics, but soccer is notoriously subjective.

I'm a soccer fan first so I know for a fact all teams bend the laws of the game. One adage I learned in my playing days was the team or persons who screamed for "fair play" most and loudest were most likely to break their own fair play covenant.

Italy has been singled out for some reason yet, when one consults history, they are far from the worst offenders. Consider the worst act of simulation came by way of a Brazilian named Rivaldo in 2002; the worst act of aggression a Frenchman in Zinedine Zidane in 2006 and Tony Shcumacher, a German, nearly snapped the neck of a French player with one of the most barbaric hits I've ever seen back in 1982. The most farcical game in the last 30 years involved the Netherlands and Portugal in 2006.

What about the English? The biggest cry babies of them all? They always claim to be "men." More pragmatic men knew this to be false.

Luckily a website is tracking all the "cheating" and have set up their own criteria to determine who are breaking the spirit of the laws of the game.

The more the English bitched and whined about Latins, the more people lavished love on Brazil, the more they reinforced the steeley German and the more they attacked Italy the more I became skeptical. I used to do my own tabulating of simulations and stopped after realizing it was far from a national or cultural issue and more a football-wide problem. My inexact figures had the three aforementioned near the top of the list.

Lo and behold, England leads this particular list followed by Brazil and Germany. Argentina, Portugal and USA also lead the list. Italy comes in 11th. Greece came in first. As I suspected, they're no better or worse than most countries but the ones whose supporters attack Italy most often have teams that commit more indiscretions.

Perception is a bitch sometimes.

Anyway, if you want to see the list from the site just click on sign up and then stats. It's not perfect science, but it doesn't have to be.

As for what constitutes a dive, to the vast majority of people who don't play soccer or comprehend it or even the fans who watch it but play it poorly, there's a fine line between a dive, embellishment and foul. Sometimes all three get mixed up but to an objective person, it's easy to detect.