Italy completed their qualification campaign with a comfortable 3-1 win over the Faroe Islands in Modena last night. Carlo Garganese explains how the Azzurri proved all their doubters wrong…
It sounds like a bit of an old cliché but during this Euro 2008 qualifying campaign, Italy well and truly proved that they are not the World Champions for nothing.
Following the Azzurri’s disastrous start to the campaign, which included a 1-1 draw at home to Lithuania and a 3-1 defeat in Paris to France, the Italian and foreign media had their knives sharpened.
As someone who lives in England, and who also has a passion for the English game, I can give you a first-hand account of what the so-called experts were saying over here.
The English media looked at Italy’s poor start and virtually branded them as a laughing stock. “How could a team like this win the World Cup?†was a common cry.
Of course England were setting the world alight at this time – they had just thrashed the ‘mighty’ Andorra 5-0, and earned an ‘heroic’ 1-0 win in Macedonia.
Fourteen months or so down the line who is laughing now?
Italy have just gone on a magnificent run of nine wins and a draw from ten games to finish top of a group that included World Cup finalists France, World Cup quarter-finalists Ukraine, and one of Europe’s rising forces Scotland.
Meanwhile England displayed their innate lack of technical, tactical and managerial qualities to finish joint-third with Israel in probably the weakest of all the qualifying groups.
Indeed when the veteran BBC commentator John Motson is saying with five minutes to go of England-Croatia that “we need Andorra to do us a favour against the Russians†you realise how desperately pathetic things have become.
If there is one thing that we have learnt from this qualifying campaign, it is that you should never write off the Italians. Indeed by doing so, as was the case in last summer’s World Cup and during the 1982 triumph, you only succeed in getting the best out of them.
Roberto Donadoni, like the now ex-England boss Steve McClaren, was subject to some vicious abuse from supporters and the media. While the criticism for ‘Macky Mouse’ was deserved, this most certainly was not the case for Donadoni.
As I wrote in an article a few days ago, the ex-Livorno boss has done a magnificent job, especially when you consider the huge number of handicaps he has had to deal with – the Totti/Nesta saga, taking over from a legend like Marcello Lippi, the difficulty of the qualifying group e.t.c.
Italy proved that their World Cup triumph in Germany was no fluke – it was fully deserved. The Azzurri were the best team in the world then, and it is still difficult to find a better international team around now.
Believe you me it will take one hell of an effort for a team to beat Italy in Austria and Switzerland.
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