After Italy’s poor performance in Bulgaria, it would appear there are already many questioning Prandelli’s decision making, despite what happened at Euro 2012. Rather than the squad, as Prandelli asserts, it is the manager who needs to rediscover his identity. Some (where were they in June, I wonder) even say he has never had an identity; that the Euro Championships were the blip, not the result in Bulgaria.
Personally, while such criticism is unsurprising – this is Italy we’re talking about, after all – it is, in my view, ill-founded. Those who criticise seem to forget the state Italy were in prior to Prandelli’s arrival. From World Champions, we had exited South Africa as a laughing stock, with only the antics of the French keeping the fiercest mocking at bay. Prandelli came in and reshaped us, making it clear the type of team he wanted to build – a midfield of ‘piedi buoni’ to keep the ball, not tiki-taka style, but our own. An attacking mentality was instilled into a 4-3-1-2 formation that soon began to pay dividends. The Azzurri qualified with matches to spare, conceding only two goals in the whole of the Euro qualifying and playing some great football along the way.
And then came the Euros – a stuttering start, yes, but this is Italy. By the knock-out stages, they were in full swing, surprising England and the media there with their attacking play, destroying a much fancied German team with those goals from Super Mario. Yes, there was the final, but there were mitigating circumstances.
But for some that’s where the doubts began. Did Prandelli err in sticking to his four man defence? Did he show too much loyalty to players who were only half-fit? Did he make mistakes with the substitutions? You could fairly answer yes to all of those, but that doesn’t mean we should question his project. No one expected us to reach the final. No one. It was thanks to his tactics (and the performances of the players who believed in them) that we made it there.
And so back to Bulgaria. Yes, the performance was poor, no doubt. But the result? The result wasn’t actually that bad, was it? Bulgaria away is probably the second – or at least third – hardest game in the group (the other two being Denmark away and Czech Republic away). We played the game two weeks into the Serie A season, after a long summer of football. From the players regularly used at the Euros, Prandelli was missing six – Abate, Balzaretti, Chiellini, Montolivo, Cassano, and most importantly, Balotelli. There’s those mitigating circumstances again, right?
And it’s not like it was all negative. Osvaldo grabbed two goals to continue his great start to the season. He looks like a proper “modern” centre forward, the kind that Prandelli has been wanting for a while. Surely we’re all excited at the prospect of seeing him and Balotelli up front? We’d either score a bucketload, or ened up with nine men (maybe eight if Cassano started behind them)! And, though Ogbonna was undoubtedly at fault for the second Bulgarian goal, he has shown signs in this game and more so the England friendly that he could turn into a great defender, especially stepping out from the back.
There is no doubt that Prandelli has to remind the team how he wants them to play, and over the season he will be helped with the return of most of the players listed above. But he also rightly wants to integrate the new players into the squad, and it would be foolish to think it won’t take time for them to learn the style and even just get used to playing at this level.
For me, it isn’t really about whether he plays three at the back or four, but what he aims to have the team do. He’s said himself that he would rather beat Malta by a goal and play well than score a bucketload and play badly. It’s a sentiment I agree wholeheartedly with, and given time, I think it is a method that will lead the naysayers to go back into hiding in June 2014.
Follow Marco on Twitter @marcoarrinaldi
Get the latest Serie A and Italian football news right here…
