Italy were dumped out of the World Cup on Tuesday as another insipid performance pushed coach Cesare Prandelli into tending his resignation, admitting his project had failed.
It was the right thing to do given the manner of the defeat not only against Uruguay but also the loss to Costa Rica which had already followed a run of poor results that would have seen even the most stable club manager sacked last Christmas.
Incredibly, Prandelli’s team, before sneaking that 2-1 win over England in the first round of Group D games, had failed to beat anybody in an official match since a victory over the Czech Republic in September 2013! That’s one win in 10 games for the four times World Champions.
In amongst that depressing sequence were draws with sides such as Luxembourg and Armenia. Hardly something that the coach could use to build upon coming into a World Cup.
But, as we had already stated prior to the competition, Italy are always quite poor in meaningless games but have that canny knack of coming good in tournament football. We have witnessed many an Azzurri side stumble all the way to a major final and on four occasions, lift the trophy.
But this particular side had caught even the most sceptical Italy fan unaware.
In truth this current Italy team was always doomed to failure, we just never saw it coming because it’s Italy.
How often are we reminded of 1982 and 2006, where both sides scraped through the first phase only to go on and win against all the odds? The same can be said for World Cups in 1990 and 1994 with squads that initially failed to excite but went on to finish third and then runners-up respectively.
But those past reputations are exactly what fooled us all this time, just as it had done four years earlier in South Africa under Marcello Lippi.
What we are trying to say is that no matter how Prandelli sliced and diced this team, the over-bearing issue is that these players are just not good enough, at least not of the calibre to win a World Cup.
The Italy teams that stumbled their way to major Finals had first and foremost great defences. And not only in terms of conceding very little but also in offering so much in attack.
We can reel off legends such as Alessandro Nesta, Fabio Cannavaro, Gaetano Scirea, Claudio Gentile, Franco Baresi, Paolo Maldini and Fabio Grosso.
In fact we could probably name a few more.
But where is that quality in this year’s crop? Players like Leonardo Bonucci, Andrea Barzagli and Giorgio Chiellini are good but are they World Cup winning good? Full backs Ignazio Abate, Mattia De Sciglio and Matteo Darmian are either works in progress or just the best of an ever-diminishing talent pool to pick from.
Looking at the midfield, the Italian hopes were massively pinned on a 35-year old Andrea Pirlo. The Juventus player undoubtedly has quality but his lack of energy was hugely evident as the years finally caught up with him in the tropical heat of Brazil. This was not the man of Germany 2006 or even that of Euro 2012.
Marco Verratti has potential but the young player is not a regular at his club side PSG and must look for constant first team action to take on the role that will be vacated by Pirlo now that their tournament has ended.
Elsewhere, a distinctly average Thiago Motta, Claudio Marchisio, Marco Parolo, Alberto Aquilani and an injury-prone Daniele De Rossi will struggle to make us dance in the streets the way Giancarlo Antognoni, Gennaro Gattuso, Bruno Conti, Giuseppe Giannini and Marco Tardelli could (and did).
And in attack, well I doubt there is any Italian fan that will not agree in saying that Mario Balotelli and Ciro Immobile, for technical, tactical and frankly mental reasons would never shoot us towards a World Cup final.
Did we ever, truly, believe they could match the glory passed down to us by players such as Roberto Baggio, Salvatore Schillaci, Paolo Rossi, Alessandro Altobelli, Francesco Totti and Alessandro Del Piero?
The overwhelming truth is that the current set of Italian players are plainly quite average, with nobody that can be considered truly ‘world class’. A side flimsily held together by a competent and knowledgeable coach who did a decent job when considering the material he had to work with.
The fact is that right now, Italy are nothing more than just another average football team and, unfortunately for fans of the Azzurri, that is unlikely to change any time soon.
Follow Enzo on Twitter: @enzoM_fif
