7 – Giorgio Chiellini
A great deal of responsibility was on Giorgio Chiellini when he started playing in blue. A golden age in Italian defending had just set past the horizon, and he was the only man with some of the attributes to continue the tradition (other interesting defenders like, Andrea Ranocchia or Leonardo Bonucci, were not ready that early).
Chiellini’s achievements and performances have not been quite at the level of some of the best defenders, but he has time to do better, and he contributed very substantially to all the teams he was in. He was perhaps Italy’s best player – or at least, one of the few salvageable ones – in Italy’s disastrous Euro 2008 campaign, including a great game against Spain which ended 0-0.
He was there for the 2010 debacle as well, but he showed a true warrior spirit in 2012 for as long as he lasted, fighting against his injury and giving a sense of identity to a defensive system that was otherwise somewhat vague.
Chiellini is a stopper who comes across as rather brutish, somewhat unrefined, compared to some of his predecessors. But he is a tenacious and no-nonsense central defender with enough tactical agility to play also as fullback, and a great addition to any Azzurri team he plays in. His international career is far from over, so we all hope he can rise higher up in an hypothetical 2010 – 2020 list.
