Quote:
Originally Posted by Locke
People have known this for the better part of 2 years, and yet he was the man at the back doing all the heavy lifting. Did they have no one else that could do the job?
They took a guy who was well past his prime and expected him to live up to standard set 4 years ago, effectively asking him to play over his head? That is absolutely asinine. What kind of coach/manager would make a decision like that?
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I think it has something to do with the curse of winning. Italy had 9 players returning from the 2006 squad, and had they not been named, there would have been huge criticism. Had the Italians been embarrassed in the Euro 2008 tournament, we might have seen some rather noticible changes, but instead, they lost on penalty kicks to the eventual winners of that tournament and the thinking was that bringing back Lippi was enough to get this same group back on track.
Finishing was a problem for this team, as was providing decent service for the strikers. Part of that can be blamed on Pirlo's injury as he really is the man that controls the engine room. I think another issue is that these guys have already won a championship before. That's fine if you are still young and the legs are willing, but if you are an aging superstar, I think the desire to deny the body tends to disappear. We've seen this with teams in the past. The 2006 squad had some older players as well, but having never won the holy grail of sports at that time, they were willing to put it all on the line. This squad simply was not willing to do the same thing and it showed.