You have to feel for Marcello Lippi. In posterity’s assessment, his failure to retain the FIFA World Cup in 2010 for Italy may overshadow his winning it for them in 2006. And, going by the political fallout in Italy of the Azzuri’s unceremonious exit from South Africa 2010, especially the alacrity with which the xenophobic Northern League latched onto it to advance their anti-immigrant rhetoric, Lippi may even be judged to have contributed massively to a neo-fascist risorgimento in southern Europe. That might seem a bit far-fetched. But if you know ‘posterity’ by now, you sure know it will find a way around it. Tony Blair gets it. That is why he is adamantly banking on posterity to ‘exonerate’ him for a misadventure that many among the ‘contemporary’ feel too close to the bone to exonerate him for. Given posterity’s well-documented penchant for the grotesque, Lippi may be praying to Santa Maria that he may be condemned merely as a failed football manager.
Lippi’s hope of successfully defending the title was pretty ambitious and a bit ahistoric to begin with (as P. Govinda Pillai might put it in one of his frequent hyperbolic moments, it was ‘diametrically opposed to the dialectically ordered trajectory of history’). There have been only two instances of nations winning the most sought-after crown in world football in consecutive fashion: Italy itself in 1934 and 1938; and Brazil in 1958 and 1962. And only Italy’s feat was accomplished with the same manager at the helm on both occasions (the matchless Vittorio Pozzo). So, Lippi might have guessed that his expectation of a comeback victory strayed a bit beyond the zone of the probable. In the inimitably street-wise lingo of the stand-up comedian Chris Rock, if you want to be guaranteed of making money on the ‘comeback’, you either have to be a drug dealer or a medical practitioner. And, needless to say, Lippi was neither.
To be fair to Italy, they were not the first defending champions to bow out in the first round of the FIFA World Cup – the most recent instance being France’s disgraceful stumbling at the first hurdle in Korea-Japan 2002. Having drawn a blank in their first two matches, France had to beat Denmark by a margin of two goals in their final preliminary-round match in Incheon. A victory by two goals was achieved – by the Danes. What was unique about Italy’s departure was that it had seemed eerily inevitable from the start. And, when it finally happened with that shocker of a defeat against Slovakia at Ellis Park in Johannesburg, it hardly generated the sort of shockwaves that would normally accompany a high-profile team’s upset by minnows.
Part of the reason for this collective nonchalance may have been what was evident all along – the elephant in the room – i.e. the team Italy brought to South Africa was, technically and talent-wise, million miles away from the one that triumphed in Germany four years ago. While the absence of Del Piero and Nesta was glaring, the presence and performance of the likes of Cannavaro and Zambrotta was hardly convincing. And the legendary rock solid Italian defense, the team’s kingpin in the normal run of things, crumbled like a pack of cards when exposed to hardly intimidating attacks from Paraguay and New Zealand. Midfield was often in disarray and Iaquinta’s and Di Natale’s striking abilities lacked the sting and predatory instincts of Totti and ‘Pippo’ Inzaghi. And, Gigi Buffon’s early exit due to injury deprived the team of a world-class goalkeeper. Italian team at South Africa 2010 was simply not championship material, period.
Nevertheless, it’s not yet time to pen Italian football’s obituary. Italy has bounced back from disastrous tournaments before. In fact, on any given day, they are far superior to the grossly overrated but invariably ill-equipped sides like England. In Cesare Prandelli, Lippi’s replacement as national coach, they have a tactically accomplished and hard working manager. He has spent almost half a decade with the Tuscan outfit Fiorentina, enabling it to regain some of the spark that characterized the club when it had Gabriel Batistuta among its ranks. Italian football is all set to be on a road to recovery, and FIFA 2010 will soon be a distant memory.
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