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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They have good young defenders who were unproven at the International level and Lippi is not the manager who would take out his captain to put in an unproven young player.
The problem is that it would have been too hard to take Cannavaro out of the line up, due to the respect Cannavaro earned for his 2006 performance.
Had he retired after 2008 like many had hoped the Italian team would have been better off but he felt like he was still at his best and Lippi was willing to take the risk that he would step it up like he did in 2006.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GirlySports
But how are the young guys? Are they any good? Montolivo was there, he did nothing. One young guy that Lippi did choose over an old guy was Criscito over Grosso and he was utter crap. Italy has famously been strong at left back, he might have been one of the worst ever.
It'll be a dry spell to Italian football for a while.
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The youth is available but the problem is that even in the Serie A they do not give young players a chance to break into the team until they are 24/25 even for the lower table teams.
Lately the big teams buy the good young players at 18-20 then keep them on the bench in favour of older Italian or foreign players.
I wish the National team had done what the German National team did and went with young players for this tournament. Nobody thought this version of the team had a shot at winning so they may have well went with younger players to give them experience for Euro 2012 and WC 2014.