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fpbDear fishity,
I really was a bit more hostile in my response to you last night than I can really justify. The only way I can explain it is that the vile comments from the Brutish Broadcasting Creeperation still rankled. I apologize. You are right, it ought in theory to be a great game, and certainly may the best team win. I would not want Italy to win, like Argentina did in 1990, at the end of an ugly and unfair campaign.
However, it is anything but certain that it will actually be a great game. It is almost a rule of football that, the more important the match, the longer expected, the more significant the result, the worse the teams play. The point is that in order to win, teams have to be unafraid to lose. They have to go down to the pitch with a desire to hammer that ball home even if it goes out and makes you look like a fool, and do it again and again until it goes home; and to keep doing it even if, at the other side, the opponents have just got a goal and everyone is looking at everyone else with doubt in their eyes. It takes, in short, moral courage. Most teams tend to react by becoming defensive. By this I do not mean that they play defensively, but that they become afraid of taking risks. Players near the goal, instead of shooting, pass the ball to someone else. The ball is just kept in play with no motion either way. When both teams are thus nervous - which is bound to be the case in a winner-take-all situation such as a final or semi - the game degenerates. I am sure you have seen it happen.
There is nothing wrong with playing defensively, and if the rules of the game had not wanted us to, they would not have included offside. When played well, by a Baresi or a Cannavaro, a good strong defence can be a pleasure to watch. It is when defence itself is dull, and not followed by counter-attack, that boredom ensues.
Some teams have got disappointment down to a fine art. Spain is a famous case, but the Netherlands are even worse - twice now, in the seventies and the eighties, they presented teams that should have contended for the World Cup and who were regularly beaten. In their case, nervousness is accompanied by an unhappy habit of quarrelling between themselves, especially but not exclusively between blacks and whites.
Italy play to win, and this is the difference. At the end of the day, the famous Italian defensive game - which was anyway not in evidence against the Ukraine - is finalized to taking the opponent forward and then ripping them apart with well-designed counter-attacks. Italian teams have two goals going down to the pitch: not to lose; and to win if possible. Somehow, the country developped a tradition of confidence that means that fans and players both expect our teams to get results. That, in itself, does much to counteract the general players' nervousness I described.
Circumstances in this World Cup are special. Beware, I say, beware Italians humiliated or in mourning. That is when we are most dangerous. The last time Italy won the Cup, in 1982, it was at the end of a series of national disasters that had included terrorism, abiding economic crisis, and national disappointment in various areas including football. Nobody gave them a chance; and they demolished Maradona's Argentina, beat Zico's great Brazil in one of the finest football games ever played, cancelled the best side Poland will ever have, and completely dominated West Germany. In these cases, wounded pride acts as a stimulant - the perception, above all, of the distance between the place naturally assumed to be ours and the place where we are. At that point, personal vanity and quarrel are laid aside, national pride takes the place of personal pride, and opponents find that they are in all sorts of unexpected trouble.
But there is another reason why this Italy team ought to be dreaded. As you heard, the appalling football scandal going on in Italy, which is apt to ruin the careers of many members of the team including Lippi and Buffon, has driven a sensitive and popular former player, Pessotto, to make a serious attempt on his own life that nearly succeeded. It is still not certain that he can be saved. Many of the players were friends of Pessotto, who seems to be a genuinely nice guy, and feel that he was hounded, mainly by the Press, but also by ruthless and self-seeking magistrates. I once saw an Italian team playing for a dead man - Atalanta, a few years ago, when one of their forwards died in a road accident. That Sunday, though they had nothing to avenge except ugly blind fate, they came down to the pitch like a thunderstorm. They played like they never played before or since; the other team never stood a chance - in that kind of mood, they'd have flattened Brazil. And every time one of them scored, he'd run the length of the field and kiss the shirt of the dead player, which had been arranged across the Atalanta goal nets. Call this sentimental, call this overblown - these are young men, after all, and highly emotional. Italy, unless I read the story wrong, is in that kind of mood for Pessotto now, perhaps even angrier. They feel that they have been hounded as individuals and as a team, they are grieving for a friend, and they are wounded in their joint national pride; and in that kind of mood, our boys can be like a swarm of angry hornets.
fishity,I really was a bit more hostile in my response to you last night than I can really justify. The only way I can explain it is that the vile comments from the Brutish Broadcasting Creeperation still rankled. I apologize. You are right, it ought in theory to be a great game, and certainly may the best team win. I would not want Italy to win, like Argentina did in 1990, at the end of an ugly and unfair campaign.
However, it is anything but certain that it will actually be a great game. It is almost a rule of football that, the more important the match, the longer expected, the more significant the result, the worse the teams play. The point is that in order to win, teams have to be unafraid to lose. They have to go down to the pitch with a desire to hammer that ball home even if it goes out and makes you look like a fool, and do it again and again until it goes home; and to keep doing it even if, at the other side, the opponents have just got a goal and everyone is looking at everyone else with doubt in their eyes. It takes, in short, moral courage. Most teams tend to react by becoming defensive. By this I do not mean that they play defensively, but that they become afraid of taking risks. Players near the goal, instead of shooting, pass the ball to someone else. The ball is just kept in play with no motion either way. When both teams are thus nervous - which is bound to be the case in a winner-take-all situation such as a final or semi - the game degenerates. I am sure you have seen it happen.
There is nothing wrong with playing defensively, and if the rules of the game had not wanted us to, they would not have included offside. When played well, by a Baresi or a Cannavaro, a good strong defence can be a pleasure to watch. It is when defence itself is dull, and not followed by counter-attack, that boredom ensues.
Some teams have got disappointment down to a fine art. Spain is a famous case, but the Netherlands are even worse - twice now, in the seventies and the eighties, they presented teams that should have contended for the World Cup and who were regularly beaten. In their case, nervousness is accompanied by an unhappy habit of quarrelling between themselves, especially but not exclusively between blacks and whites.
Italy play to win, and this is the difference. At the end of the day, the famous Italian defensive game - which was anyway not in evidence against the Ukraine - is finalized to taking the opponent forward and then ripping them apart with well-designed counter-attacks. Italian teams have two goals going down to the pitch: not to lose; and to win if possible. Somehow, the country developped a tradition of confidence that means that fans and players both expect our teams to get results. That, in itself, does much to counteract the general players' nervousness I described.
Circumstances in this World Cup are special. Beware, I say, beware Italians humiliated or in mourning. That is when we are most dangerous. The last time Italy won the Cup, in 1982, it was at the end of a series of national disasters that had included terrorism, abiding economic crisis, and national disappointment in various areas including football. Nobody gave them a chance; and they demolished Maradona's Argentina, beat Zico's great Brazil in one of the finest football games ever played, cancelled the best side Poland will ever have, and completely dominated West Germany. In these cases, wounded pride acts as a stimulant - the perception, above all, of the distance between the place naturally assumed to be ours and the place where we are. At that point, personal vanity and quarrel are laid aside, national pride takes the place of personal pride, and opponents find that they are in all sorts of unexpected trouble.
But there is another reason why this Italy team ought to be dreaded. As you heard, the appalling football scandal going on in Italy, which is apt to ruin the careers of many members of the team including Lippi and Buffon, has driven a sensitive and popular former player, Pessotto, to make a serious attempt on his own life that nearly succeeded. It is still not certain that he can be saved. Many of the players were friends of Pessotto, who seems to be a genuinely nice guy, and feel that he was hounded, mainly by the Press, but also by ruthless and self-seeking magistrates. I once saw an Italian team playing for a dead man - Atalanta, a few years ago, when one of their forwards died in a road accident. That Sunday, though they had nothing to avenge except ugly blind fate, they came down to the pitch like a thunderstorm. They played like they never played before or since; the other team never stood a chance - in that kind of mood, they'd have flattened Brazil. And every time one of them scored, he'd run the length of the field and kiss the shirt of the dead player, which had been arranged across the Atalanta goal nets. Call this sentimental, call this overblown - these are young men, after all, and highly emotional. Italy, unless I read the story wrong, is in that kind of mood for Pessotto now, perhaps even angrier. They feel that they have been hounded as individuals and as a team, they are grieving for a friend, and they are wounded in their joint national pride; and in that kind of mood, our boys can be like a swarm of angry hornets.
