In the second part of the three part series, Forza Italian Football looks at the Azzurri midfield. Remember to check out out assessment of the defence, and check back a little later for our thoughts on the attack.
La verità sta nel mezzo, goes the Italian proverb. For Cesare Prandelli’s Azzurri, truth will indeed be found in the middle, as the power of his team will depend directly on the functionality of the midfield.
The restoration of the Italian midfield has been an ongoing managerial challenge since the 2006 World Cup. It is worth revisiting the history of the enterprise.
The winning combination, back in 2006, saw a creative regista (Andrea Pirlo) flanked by a destroyer (Gennaro Gattuso) in the middle, with an all-purposes workhorse on the left (Simone Perrotta) and a dynamic winger (Mauro German Camoranesi) on the right. The phalange provided a very effective combination of creativity and stamina, all the more so because it could bounce its game off the Roman trequartista Francesco Totti.
The waning form of the 2006 protagonists along with the withdrawal of Totti from the international scene sanctioned the end of this World Cup-winning alchemy. Ever since then, a number of combinations have been attempted, predominantly around the 4-2-3-1 model, but the absence of genuine wingers from the Italian roster, along with the difficult mechanics of the formation, doomed this project to failure.
Prandelli, now at his turn on the swings, has taken things in a new direction. Prioritising style of play over formation, he has demonstrated in the first two years of his management a volition towards a diamond four-man midfield, composed almost entirely of central players. There are no wingers in Prandelli’s Italy – at most we can mention Juventus’ Emanuele Giaccherini, who can slot into the flank, but he is neither natural nor traditional in the role.
Prandelli’s entire team is built around the midfield, because his football philosophy – patently inspired, as so many modern teams are, by Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona – depends on possession and short, first-touch passes. This is why he has filled his midfield with players who are, in many ways, similar to each other (at least from a positional point of view). The purpose is that of deploying four very broad-ranging midfielders in such a way that they are all able to interchange tasks and position at any time. Rather than assigning them a specific role in accordance with their skills, Prandelli hopes to erase the tactical points of reference for his adversaries.
If Pirlo is marked, Riccardo Montolivo can act as the regista. If Daniele De Rossi cannot track back to provide coverage, Thiago Motta can turn to man-marking. If Claudio Marchisio is too distant to break on the run, Antonio Nocerino can overlap. True, Montolivo may be more advanced than De Rossi, and Pirlo is likely to be the fulcrum of a great deal of plays, but every single one of Prandelli’s eight midfielders will be expected to provide a substantial contribution in both the offensive and defensive phase of the game.
This is the plan. Can it be executed? One of the caveats of playing this way is that it requires the team to work as a veritable organon, utterly smooth in its transitions from one department to another. It follows that even though the midfield will be key to Italy’s performance, it will also rely heavily on contributions from the rear and the front. A major question that remains to be answered is how the fullbacks will integrate themselves into the game, as the absence of wingers demands a certain degree of pressure from the back.
While Prandelli’s fullbacks are certainly qualified, they are also relatively inexperienced (with the exception of Giorgio Chiellini, who is, however, recovering from an injury). It is also unlikely that they’ll be awarded the necessary freedom against teams strong in attacking the flanks, like Holland or France, against the likes of which the peninsular fullbacks will be pinned back to guard their respective opponents. The midfield will then have to work even harder to compensate for the lack of support.
An equally important question regards the interplay of the midfield with the forwards. The trequartista (probably Montolivo) is traditionally expected to link up play between the midfield and the offence, but in this case the task is at least partly delegated to the creative seconda punta. The reason for this is that Montolivo, as discussed above, will be busy taking up some broader midfield tasks than a pure trequartista’s, including defensive chores. The seconda punta is then charged with wide tactical duties, and these will no doubt fall on Antonio Cassano, whose state of form is even sketchier than Chiellini’s.
Aside from these two issues, there are questions regarding some of the individual midfielders. Can Montolivo finally perform on the big stage, after so many years of (spectral) promise? Can we rely on Pirlo, aged 33, not to pick up an injury or lose his condition halfway through the tournament? Is Marchisio, notoriously a Jekyll and Hyde type of player, going to keep up his reputation for inconstancy? And what of the fresh meat, Giaccherini and Alessandro Diamanti, two interesting and creative players at their first international tournament? Can they live up to the pressure?
Prandelli must be commended for a sound tactical plan that has the potential to lift the Italian midfield from its recent swamps. He is certainly not lacking in vision. But too many variables remain out of his control, from the form and the reliability of the individual players, to the gloomy circumstances in which this tournament begins (the betting scandal, namely, and its unfathomable effects). The coach and the team’s ability to adapt to new scenarios and fix-it-on-the-run will ultimately decide the extent of Italy’s run in Poland and Ukraine, and this is particularly the case for the midfield. Flexibility is the key word, not organisation.
Midfielders: Daniele De Rossi (Roma), Alessandro Diamanti (Bologna), Emanuele Giaccherini (Juventus), Claudio Marchisio (Juventus), Riccardo Montolivo (Fiorentina), Thiago Motta (Paris St. Germain), Antonio Nocerino (Milan), Andrea Pirlo (Juventus).
