WC2010 Group F - Italy, Paraguay, New Zealand, Slovakia

Pierre Littbarski wrote:Commiserations to Chiellini - he gave it everything he had but no one was going to beat Vidic to the "Worst CB of the tournament" award.

Pierre Littbarski wrote:Commiserations to Chiellini - he gave it everything he had but no one was going to beat Vidic to the "Worst CB of the tournament" award.

Chiellini couldn't even win the "worst italian CB of the world cup" award...

Wheres the Lets Laugh at Italy thread?

bluenine wrote:

Pierre Littbarski wrote:Commiserations to Chiellini - he gave it everything he had but no one was going to beat Vidic to the "Worst CB of the tournament" award.

Chiellini couldn't even win the "worst italian CB of the world cup" award...

Canna did more bad than Chiellini but he also did more good so it was a tough one.

That is the worst Italian team I have ever seen, yet it could easily have been avoided if only Lippi had picked a better squad. Any 11 random Italians from Serie A could have got through that group.

Lippi is a disgrace.

bluenine wrote:

Persistence wrote:

Jaime wrote:More slovak acting...................................

and? I don't like this crap at all, but the Italians would have done exactly the same in similar circumstances.

And so would ve the dutch or the spanish or whatever.... lets face it, nationality has little correlation to playacting/diving these days...

Not convinced.

Examples of it happens with every nation sure, but the extent of the play acting and it's frequency is still very much in correlation to nationality

FFS Italy

This was the easiest group perhaps!

Shows again how awful the WC in Germany was. Such an undeserved winner in the end!

Also shows how meaningless those crushing victories from Holland against France and Italy were(though both were better back then)

Murray wrote:That is the worst Italian team I have ever seen, yet it could easily have been avoided if only Lippi had picked a better squad. Any 11 random Italians from Serie A could have got through that group.

Lippi is a disgrace.

Doubt it. Italy just lacks talent at the moment. No wonder a team with no Italians at all dominates that league.

Murray wrote:That is the worst Italian team I have ever seen, yet it could easily have been avoided if only Lippi had picked a better squad. Any 11 random Italians from Serie A could have got through that group.

Lippi is a disgrace.

Not only that, which is already shameful, but also he consistently picked the worst 11 and system from the crappy 23 he brought along. Class

Fey wrote:

Murray wrote:That is the worst Italian team I have ever seen, yet it could easily have been avoided if only Lippi had picked a better squad. Any 11 random Italians from Serie A could have got through that group.

Lippi is a disgrace.

Doubt it. Italy just lacks talent at the moment. No wonder a team with no Italians at all dominates that league.

Absolutely correct - sure it wasn't Italy's best out there but its too easy to hide behind that rather than acknowledging that their players aren't as good.

For the past god knows how many years English fans have thought that we have better players than Italy and for the 1st time its true.

Disagree about 2006 though - they were a great team and no one could score v them in open play for the whole tournament

Fey wrote:
Shows again how awful the WC in Germany was. Such an undeserved winner in the end!

man don't try to rewrite history.
that team, even if not the best winner in wc history for sure, was another galaxy on every possible level in comparision to this year one.

and I'm confident it could have pissed all over most if not all of the teams in this wc. which so far has been quite worse in quality than the last one.

Fey wrote:

Murray wrote:That is the worst Italian team I have ever seen, yet it could easily have been avoided if only Lippi had picked a better squad. Any 11 random Italians from Serie A could have got through that group.

Lippi is a disgrace.

Doubt it. Italy just lacks talent at the moment. No wonder a team with no Italians at all dominates that league.

All they had to do was beat New Zealand, even Scotland could do that.

Pierre Littbarski wrote:

Fey wrote:

Murray wrote:That is the worst Italian team I have ever seen, yet it could easily have been avoided if only Lippi had picked a better squad. Any 11 random Italians from Serie A could have got through that group.

Lippi is a disgrace.

Doubt it. Italy just lacks talent at the moment. No wonder a team with no Italians at all dominates that league.

Absolutely correct - sure it wasn't Italy's best out there but its too easy to hide behind that rather than acknowledging that their players aren't as good.

For the past god knows how many years English fans have thought that we have better players than Italy and for the 1st time its true.

Disagree about 2006 though - they were a great team and no one could score v them in open play for the whole tournament

Im sorry but I disagree with this. Italy clearly had a good pool of players to pick from. Not at the quality of what they had 4 years ago but still pretty good.

------------------Buffon--------------

Maggio---Chiellini---Nesta*----Criscito--

--------Montolivo/Pirlo--De Rossi/Palombo---


--Quagliarella-----Miccoli------Cassano

----------------Iaquinta---------

This team would have been much better then what Lippi brought with him. His failure is not simply his poor squad selection but the fact that he didn't try to give experience to some of the younger guys but simply persisted with the old guys.

Super Africa wrote:

Pierre Littbarski wrote:

Fey wrote:

Murray wrote:That is the worst Italian team I have ever seen, yet it could easily have been avoided if only Lippi had picked a better squad. Any 11 random Italians from Serie A could have got through that group.

Lippi is a disgrace.

Doubt it. Italy just lacks talent at the moment. No wonder a team with no Italians at all dominates that league.

Absolutely correct - sure it wasn't Italy's best out there but its too easy to hide behind that rather than acknowledging that their players aren't as good.

For the past god knows how many years English fans have thought that we have better players than Italy and for the 1st time its true.

Disagree about 2006 though - they were a great team and no one could score v them in open play for the whole tournament

Im sorry but I disagree with this. Italy clearly had a good pool of players to pick from. Not at the quality of what they had 4 years ago but still pretty good.

------------------Buffon--------------

Maggio---Chiellini---Nesta*----Criscito--

--------Montolivo/Pirlo--De Rossi/Palombo---


--Quagliarella-----Miccoli------Cassano

----------------Iaquinta---------

This team would have been much better then what Lippi brought with him. His failure is not simply his poor squad selection but the fact that he didn't try to give experience to some of the younger guys but simply persisted with the old guys.

Not sure that you could have Quag, miccoli and Cassano in the same team.

There is a lack of characters too.

Buffon, Canna and Gattuso were big characters but one was injured and 2 were past it - no Totti either and whatever you think of him as a player, this is the sort of character you want...

Mr Vermaelen wrote:fair play to the italians continue to fight on

they only started to fight when they were on the verge of getting KO-ed.

borocooper wrote:

To Bobo

Pierre Littbarski wrote:

Super Africa wrote:

Pierre Littbarski wrote:

Fey wrote:

Murray wrote:That is the worst Italian team I have ever seen, yet it could easily have been avoided if only Lippi had picked a better squad. Any 11 random Italians from Serie A could have got through that group.

Lippi is a disgrace.

Doubt it. Italy just lacks talent at the moment. No wonder a team with no Italians at all dominates that league.

Absolutely correct - sure it wasn't Italy's best out there but its too easy to hide behind that rather than acknowledging that their players aren't as good.

For the past god knows how many years English fans have thought that we have better players than Italy and for the 1st time its true.

Disagree about 2006 though - they were a great team and no one could score v them in open play for the whole tournament

Im sorry but I disagree with this. Italy clearly had a good pool of players to pick from. Not at the quality of what they had 4 years ago but still pretty good.

------------------Buffon--------------

Maggio---Chiellini---Nesta*----Criscito--

--------Montolivo/Pirlo--De Rossi/Palombo---


--Quagliarella-----Miccoli------Cassano

----------------Iaquinta---------

This team would have been much better then what Lippi brought with him. His failure is not simply his poor squad selection but the fact that he didn't try to give experience to some of the younger guys but simply persisted with the old guys.

Not sure that you could have Quag, miccoli and Cassano in the same team.

There is a lack of characters too.

Buffon, Canna and Gattuso were big characters but one was injured and 2 were past it - no Totti either and whatever you think of him as a player, this is the sort of character you want...

That is true and I remember reading from an Italian correspondent that the injury to Nesta was actually a blessing in the sky because Materazzi is more of a beast and he just has the mentality for it.

Im forgetting some players now so don't take the line up to literal. They could have gone for the typical Italian formation of 4-3-1-2 with Aquilani as playmaker with Cassano/Miccoli next to Gilardino/Iaquinta with Montolivo/Pirlo/ and Ambrosini-Palombo. Either way Italy certainly had players to go further then this and if Lippi had given some of those players more experience in qualifiers they could even have challenged. So with the talent pool there Italy were allowed to have much higher expectations imo.

Is this the worst Italian squad I have ever seen at the World Cup??

Talent wise, yes.

Performance wise, yes.

If you look carefully, you could almost see the zebra stripes beneath the azzurri shirts

Lippi, thank you and fuck you.

Another two years wasted for Italy. Disgraceful stuff. I actually expected them to start slow and gain momentum, knowing that while they had a lot of problems on their own and could not be compared to 2006, their weak group should still not have been a real threat to them. Guess I was wrong.

I so wanted us to meet Italy in the knock-out stages, hopefully next time.

Italy need a real transition now, some new young talent blooded in, old players have to retire. Things can only get better from now on. See you in 2012.

blutgraetsche wrote:Another two years wasted for Italy. Disgraceful stuff. I actually expected them to start slow and gain momentum, knowing that their weak group should not have been a real threat to them. Guess I was wrong.

I so wanted us to meet Italy in the knock-out stages, hopefully next time.

Italy need a real transition now, some new young talent blooded in, old players have to retire. Things can only get better from now on. See you in 2012.

Lippi should ve done that, but he didn't... Prandelli is the right man for that job tho, but he will ve to build from scratch. Lets hope he has more courage than Donadoni and Lippi.

MaloudaOntheDanceFloor wrote:

borocooper wrote:

To Bobo

Bobo wannabe italian fairy wrote:Still think Italy would be a walkover lrd?

When wind ups bite you in the ass

I don't know if the English on here really can take the piss now. Your team is as old as theirs, and if you get knocked out by us, you'll need as much of a transition as Italy does.

In fact, if I was an England fan, I'd probably hope for your team to get knocked out, because if you knock your arch rivals Germany out, a lot of the real problems your squad has, English football in general, will be glossed over and forgotten. Your problems are structural, and I have my doubts if Capello is the right guy to fix them. He is a guy for results, not for evolution or even revolution of football.

That fucking c**t Lippi is going to get lynched when he lands

Teams of wankers, good riddance.

Prandelli

Cassano, Balotelli, G.Rossi back to La Nazionale

As blue said, deserved exit, and the players have said as much as well. We all knew the problems before the WC, and they've been repeated dozens of times.

Let's hope Prandelli can give the younger players a chance and lets the flair players return to the squad.

Lippi: 'I take full responsibility, none excluded'.

Damn right you senile wanker, fuck off and listen next time. No club in Italy will touch him now, he should fuck off and retire, oh wait, he did that two years ago

blutgraetsche wrote:I don't know if the English on here really can take the piss now. Your team is as old as theirs, and if you get knocked out by us, you'll need as much of a transition as Italy does.

In fact, if I was an England fan, I'd probably hope for your team to get knocked out, because if you knock your arch rivals Germany out, a lot of the real problems your squad has, English football in general, will be glossed over and forgotten. Your problems are structural, and I have my doubts if Capello is the right guy to fix them. He is a guy for results, not for evolution or even revolution of football.

Everything always gets glossed over in England. We scraped past Slovenia 1-0 and finished 2nd and suddenly we're on course for the worlc cup again.

Super Africa wrote:What an utter disgrace this was. Only good thing to come out of this is that Lippi has ruined his reputation now. What a joke he has been.

Congrats to the Slovaks and they clearly deserved a lot more then Italy did. Was in bad taste towards the end but they still played quite well in this game allthough hopefully this is their level and not like their other games against Paraguay and New Zealand.

I wonder how he will be remembered now. Success with an extremely talented generation of Italian players, and success at Juve. Failure at Inter and at this WC.

Seems he can do well with a talented bunch of players, but when things aren't so straight forward he's crumbled. Also not sure he is the best judge of talent. He had Moggi picking his Juve squads for him. At Inter he picked the squad, and it wasn't particularly good.

Pierre Littbarski wrote:

Fey wrote:

Murray wrote:That is the worst Italian team I have ever seen, yet it could easily have been avoided if only Lippi had picked a better squad. Any 11 random Italians from Serie A could have got through that group.

Lippi is a disgrace.

Doubt it. Italy just lacks talent at the moment. No wonder a team with no Italians at all dominates that league.

Absolutely correct - sure it wasn't Italy's best out there but its too easy to hide behind that rather than acknowledging that their players aren't as good.

For the past god knows how many years English fans have thought that we have better players than Italy and for the 1st time its true.

Disagree about 2006 though - they were a great team and no one could score v them in open play for the whole tournament

It perhaps is too simplistic to say that... its certainly true for the squad which travelled to South Africa, no arguements there. But the nation still has a lot of talent, and I do not think the squad was representative of that... Let me give a coupla examples of the kind of things that could make a world of difference:

1. Totti, Cassano and Miccoli are the 3 most creative attacking talent in Italy. Few people will argue with that. Now consider any nation, take out their top 3 creative attackers, and see what you are lefft with... you will find that there is a big difference. Now we can argue that Totti or Cassano are no Kaka or Messi, but for this Italy squad, they were no less important.

2. We have been talking about this a lot - Lippi did not give youngsters enough chances... average age of the squad only tells half the story... there are 8 players in the squad who have played less than 10 games for the Azzurri (Comparison: Eng & Bra have only 3 such players). Reserve GK's I can understand, but surely 30% of your outfield players cannot be so inexperienced?? Bocchetti & Bonucci are good examples - why do neither of Italy's 2 reserve CBs (a key back up role) have little to no experience of competitive International football? Coz Lippi wasted all those chances on players like Legrotaglie... if kids like these were tried 2 years ago, maybe Italy would not have needed the aging Cannavaro in this world cup - and that could ve made all the difference...

Sometimes key decisions by the coach can make a lot of difference... look at this same England squad with McClaren, for example.... talent in a nation is not enough, it needs to be used right. And IMO Lippi forgot how to do that.... Lippi is as past it as Cannavaro is, and this should be curtains for both of them....

I agree with Pierre in that most of the players aren't as good as the previous generation. Chiellini is not at the level Nesta or Cannavaro were. Pazzini/Gila are not at the level Vieri/Inaghi were etc.

Still no excuse to continue to rely on the likes of Canna and Gattuso.