Defending Prandelli (To an Extent)

The inquest is by now underway, the nation of 60 million coaches trying to comprehend and explain what went wrong, but the fact is that Italy have been eliminated for the second consecutive time from the group stage at the World Cup. And just like in 2010, no one can deny it wasn’t merited. 

As expected Cesare Prandelli was severely criticized in the wake of the defeat to Uruguay, even more so than the defeat to Costa Rica five days prior. Ever the classy man, he resigned as boss of the Azzurri a short time after, citing ‘’ this was my technical project, and not a winning one’’, he said, dignified to the end. How can this have happened? And can we really put all of the blame on Prandelli?

Prandelli unquestionably deserves criticism for his selection choices in the remaining two group stage games, playing a 4-1-4-1 system against Costa Rica was his first major error of the tournament, yes it made sense to stick with the same tactics and same players that beat England in the opening game, but Costa Rica were never going to open themselves up and play into Italy’s hands like England in Manuas.

Mario Balotelli cut a forlorn figure throughout most of the game, completely isolated; when he finally did get service he construed to miss two glorious chances.

The ex Roma and Fiorentina manager never seemed to know what his best team and formation was, he said during friendlies before the tournament that he was changing systems to ‘keep the opposition guessing’. Is that really the case? It could very well be that he simply didn’t know how use the players at his disposal, and was hoping that if he changed systems enough times he would stumble onto something.

When Prandelli arrived as Azzurri boss in 2010 he promised a new start for Italy, he wanted the nation to fall back in love with its national team, he promised to rid Italy of the stereotypical cliché of ‘defend and counter-attack’ and ‘cynical, dirty, win-by-any-means-necessary’ style of play. In his four years as boss he did just that, until yesterday.

With confidence shaken after the defeat to Costa Rica, Prandelli tinkered his formation yet again, going 3-5-2 with Immobile and Balotelli as his forward line. The results were nothing short of disastrous; Immobile floundered while Balotelli’s contribution to the game was earning a yellow card and setting his personal record in the high jump.

Prandelli’s Italy resorted to type, men behind the ball, void of creativity, slow and ponderous. Uruguay were for the taking, but Fernando Muslera had virtually nothing to do for the entire game, he was a spectator. Italy had 55% possession yet it was sterile and for the most part went nowhere.

Marchisio’s harsh sending off and Verratti’s injury undoubtedly hindered Prandelli’s substitute choices but when you are chasing the game, why did bring on Cassano? Surely Insigne or Cerci would have been better alternatives? Players who can actually run and hound the opposition?

As the final whistle neared and it look inevitable that Italy were heading home early yet again, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Prandelli, for the simple fact that is he is a modern thinking coach, he wants to play the game in the proper way, he just didn’t have the tools to build as nice a house as he wanted. Midfield aside, there is a dearth of quality players in the Italian game

I wondered, what if Prandelli had the players’ previous Azzurri managers could draw upon? Ten years ago at Euro 2004, Giovanni Trapattoni had Francesco Totti, Alex Del Piero, Christian Vieri and a young Cassano to call on, a back line that featured Fabio Cannavaro, Alessandro Nesta and Gianluca Zambrotta, yet still contrived to play some of the worst football ever witnessed.

Look throughout the 1990s and Italy had an embarrassment of riches in defence and attack, the two positions Prandelli struggled with throughout his tenure. Arrigo Sacchi, Dino Zoff and Trapattoni were all in a position were they (wrongly one might say) could afford to ignore a genius like Roberto Baggio and opt for other players. Prandelli could never be in a situation to ignore a Baggio.

It was quite sad watching the final minutes of Italy’s doomed World Cup campaign and seeing that with Uruguay tightly marking Pirlo, it was left to Thiago Motta to try and orchestrate play. From a country that over the decades has produced some of the finest regista’s and trequartista’s to ever play the game, this more than anything for me epitomised Prandellli’s plight.

Serie A has long valued experience over giving young players a chance, this has created problems in modern times. When a young player does make the grade, it has now become so rare, they are priced to the moon and most Italian clubs simply give up trying to acquire them, so they opt to look abroad and buy a similar talent at half the price, this in turn denies Italian players playing time.

In the end Prandelli deserved better, he played a huge part in Italy’s downfall, but he wasn’t helped by the attitude of Balotelli, who has come in for criticism from Gigi Buffon and Daniele De Rossi in the aftermath of their exit. Balotelli isn’t worth focusing your attack on, he doesn’t have the mental attributes to be a leader. The problem for Prandelli, and whoever replaces him, is that they don’t have much choice.

Today the Italian papers mentioned the likes of Luciano Spalletti, Max Allegri, Roberto Mancini and Alberto Zaccheroni as contenders for the job, not exactly awe-inspiring selections, whichever manager gets the position they are going to face the same problems as Prandelli did.

The next year will be very interesting.