As Serie A’s European representatives prepare to resume their respective campaigns, it would be easy to begin this ‘European report card’ on the recent dip in Italian team’s European results performances and general standing. It would also be easy to solely blame the obvious paradigmatic shift that has taken place and repositioned the majority of football’s wealth elsewhere.
Michel Platini’s Financial Fair Play rhetoric seems to have been easily circumvented by disingenuous sponsorship deals and creative projections. One also gets the impression that Platini will eventually be replaced by someone who is a tad more ‘malleable’, leaving us all to reminisce about a lost egalitarian fantasy.
These are ready made excuses for a fall in Serie A’s standards, prestige and general self-worth but do not fully explain a desertion of the league’s tactical identity and inherent footballing DNA – something that will be addressed in this article. Let us not begin at the beginning though, instead firstly, we shall shine a heat-seeking sensor over the few vital-signs of life and relative success experienced by ‘Italy’s Finest’ exports.
AC Milan continues to defy conventional logic, whilst mainly faltering and falling over holding groin areas at home. The snoozing giants have managed to over-achieve again in the Champions League. Milan Lab (a term and organisation as paradoxical as Fox News) are probably too busy running biometric tests on Stephan El Shaaraway’s apparent transmogrification into Alexandre Pato to be able to shed any light on why this is?
Last year Milan brilliantly defeated Barcelona 2-0 and drew once more with the mighty Catalan mites. Two last 16 qualifications was an above average performance from a group of players that would, largely, not have been allowed in a Sacchi or Capello era team picture. ‘La bella figura’ that Silvio Berlusconi often refers to has been missing, though.
Playing nine to ten men behind the ball against Ajax and, only just, overcoming PSV to qualify, being prime examples of this. These draws and narrow victories serve to only place a band-aid over deep lying strategic and operational gashes. The two heavy defeats they suffered to Barcelona are a more telling representation of how far the gap is to the elite level Milan once occupied.
The recent arrival of Clarence Seedorf has seen Italy’s blogosphere launch into a flurry of, quite frankly, Salvador Dali-esque comparisons to characters such as Willy Wonka and Yoda. This stems more from a distinct lack of any real glamour transfer news and activity, than from any type of coherent evaluation of said appointment. Seedorf is a player not a manager, thusly, this decision strikes of nothing more than smoke and mirrors from Don Silvio. The recent signing of Adel Taarabt strikes of someone who has been smoking something Moroccan.
It has been opined that Seedorf could galvanise Milan in a manner similar to Antonio Conte’s Juventus appointment. Certain commentators cite him being a former club legend, just like Conte! This is as rational as deducing that Seedorf will be a success because both men are also upright walking land mammals.
Any comparison would perhaps be more logical if Juve had, in fact, appointed Lilian Thuram then publicised him being brilliant as he often wears glasses. Juventus would then have had to back their manager to the tune of Jay Jay Okocha and Ali Bernabia in the transfer market, for the comparison to be truly legitimate.
Milan will go into the Atletico Madrid game as underdogs, the Spaniards have generally been operating under the liberating freedom of the anti-establishment, underdog tag. Diego Simeone may look like he’s been dragged off the set of the movie From Dusk till Dawn but he clearly hails from the Antonio Conte school of dogmatic, brooding inspiration. Perhaps Milan’s only true positive is the suspension of waif-like captain marvel and Olive Oil look-a-like, Ricardo Montolivo?
Seedorf allegedly speaks between 84 and 85 languages; I hope he picked up the football meaning of the term catenaccio amongst them. As his much mooted, ‘Flying Ducks’ 4-2-3-1 will lead to conceding too many goals against such top level opposition. Surely five at the back, three water-carriers in midfield with Kaka behind Balotelli would be a more realistic approach for a team so lacking in defensive ability and general momentum. Anything more expansive may well see Atletico devour them like ravenous Hispanic vampires…..
Juventus are currently Italy’s strongest team by a distinguished distance. It could be argued that the only possible way this team will throw away Lo Scudetto is if Andrea Pirlo and Gianluigi Buffon’s, rumoured, marital issues are publicly revealed to derive from them going away on cowboy themed ‘fishing trips’ together, or, an escalation of a debate between Carlos Tevez and Pablo Osvaldo (over who looks most Amish) ends in permanent injury and/or jail time for both men.
Juventus, however, are THE Euro conundrum.
They started off 2013 with some real promise as they built upon finishing first place, in a group that contained Shakhtar Donetsk and Chelsea, by clearly outclassing Celtic over two legs – this set-up a tie against a plucky little group of players known as Bayern Munich. The Bavarian powerhouses ravished the Old Lady 4-0 on aggregate.
Juve’s performance was to be later enhanced, though, when a tiki-taka revolution was brutally crushed under a seemingly infinite amount of vigorous Bavarian boot stomps. Das Fatherland rejoiced in Bayern’s 8-0 evisceration of the aforementioned Barcelona and a brand new, imperious dynasty narrative appeared from a footballing worm-hole.
Fast-forward to this season’s Champions League and, despite looking every bit Real Madrid’s equal over two matches, the careless Old Lady seemed guilty of underestimating the other group opponents. Profligacy in front of goal defined the opening two drawn matches against FC Copenhagen and Galatasary. Freak blizzards terrible luck and an inability to play on a potato field, which had been half cleared by a tractor, was the Emmerdale-like, storyline of the final match day. Nonetheless overconfidence and missed opportunities now sees Juventus playing on Thursdays.
Napoli defeated Arsenal and Dortmund at home and are a side that seems eager to quash every pre-existing, pragmatic Rafa Benitez stereotype there has ever been. On further examination, though, the nature of their performances are actually emblematic of a ‘style’ of football that many, long standing, calcio followers feel uncomfortable with.
Napoli fans will argue they were ultimately just unlucky and the twelve points accrued in a ‘Group of Death’ Champions League group is evidence of the success of a new strategic approach. It could just as logically be argued that those two home victories were rendered ineffectual by the concession of five goals over the corresponding away fixtures
‘End-to-end stuff’ is an Anglo-Saxon football cliché up there with Mark Lawrenson’s effeminately delivered pun-based myopia. Traditionally in Italy they prefer a less open game plan, demanding the back-door remain firmly ‘shawshanked’. Seeing potentially decisive matches riven with defensive
ineptitude and decidedly more reminiscent of mid-nineties NBA than mid-nineties Serie A, is as unsettling and destabilising as a three-day-lasting coalition government.
Of course Napoli is not the only Italian side guilty of this, one obvious explanation is that defenders like Raul Albiol, Federico Fernandez, Andrea Ranocchia, Jorge Rolando, Kevin Constant, and Philippe Mexes (I could go on but there would be no more space left for an article) simply cannot logically be mentioned in the same tactical and talent based pantheon as Paolo Maldini, Franco Baresi, Alessandro Nesta, Ciro Ferrara, Fabio Cannavaro, Paolo Montero and Andreas Brehme (to name just a fraction).
The English Premiership is often positively characterised by its frantic goal counts. One need only look at the nine goal top of the table clash, earlier this season, between Manchester City and Arsenal. Second half goals were ironically danced to, to a chart music sound-track. Like diamonds, a goal should be precious and rare then celebrated by a maniacal chap with bulging eyes and a jugular vein bursting out from his neck, to the strained and imaginary sounds of Puccini, not Chumbawumba
Part 2 to follow tomorrow…. An in depth analysis of Inter, Fiorentina, Lazio and Udinese
Forza Milan stasera, I’d like next year’s review to be more impressive. Seedorf has reverted to a 4-5-1, my next question is, do we think he actually picked this team?