Ranocchia, Bonucci and Santon can certainly form 3/4 of a great defensive unit of the future.
yep. add criscito on the left, and u have italy's future defensive line..... although santon will have to challenge maggio for a starting place and ranocchia will have to challenge chiellini.
voxel said:
What I meant, is that your best young players are mostly attack-minded and my doubts come from the inability of your coaches to deploy the right system for them to be succesfull. It's just too hard to out-Brazil Brazil. You know?
yeah that's a very good point indeed, and i definitely agree with u.
but it's actually even worse than that. u see it would have been easier for an italian fan to accept, to digest the failure, if lippi would have choosen a different path and failed.
i mean let's imagine lippi saying "
hey u know what, we got some serious talent in this generation, let's try something new, let's try something "brasil-style". well my reaction as an italian fan would have been "i'm not really sure about that, to be honest, but hey, u're the boss, u're the great coach here, so just follow your instinct and let's see what's gonna happen".
the point is, that's not what lippi did either. coz if u wanna go for "the brazilian way" (or "the argentinian way"), then u have to deploy your best passers, your best dribblers, your most technical players.
that would mean deploying players like d'agostino,
montolivo, cigarini, cossu,
palombo, candreva, balotelli, cassano,
quagliarella, miccoli,
di natale, palladino balzaretti,
bonucci.
those are "brazilian style" players...... not pepe, not iaquinta, not gattuso. just 5 players of the aforementioned made the squad (the bolded ones).....and only 1 of em was a starter (montolivo)..... so u can clearely see we didn't even go "the brazilian way".
we didn't play italian football, we didn't play brazilian football. to be brutally honest, we didn't play football at all.
and the saddest part is that every single fan in italy knew that was coming. because this italy is no different from last year's italy in the confederations cup (actually that team was even better, coz there was rossi in the squad and pirlo was fit).
when u think at the new zealand match result, it's just crazy..... but that didn't come out of nowhere. italy played new zealand last year too, in a friendly match. that match ended 4-3!!! new zealand scored 3 fucking times!!! and it's not like we scored 4 goals and then decided to chill out and give some space to new zealand.... no, new zealand was in lead for almost the entire game! first they scored, then we equalised, then they scored again, and then we equalised, and so on.
it was just embarassing. after the match the journalists asked lippi "don't think we should leave the old glories (cannavaro, zambrotta, and co.) at home and bring in some fresh blood? how about bonucci, how about ranocchia, how about cassano, how about balotelli, how about pazzini and criscito?
he replied that match was just an episode, an incident. he said that was just a friendly and that italy would have done much better at the world cup, one year after....... and he also said many of those new players would have been called.
one year after, we've been even worse than last year. and as for lippi's promise to rejuvinate the team, only pazzini, criscito and bonucci were called..... and only one of em (criscito) has been deployed as a starter (pazzini played less than 25 minutes, bonucci didn't play at all).
that's the sad part: we ALL knew that was coming.... coz that's how italy has been playing ever since we fired donadoni.
what really amazes me is that lippi seems to be shocked at the fact we played so bad..... Good Lord where the hell have u been in the last 2 years, u idiot?!
how is it possible not to expect this outcome, when this is the way u had this team playing ever since u got the job back?!!
the only thing that brings a smile on my face is that now lippi is gonna face the worst nightmare for a coach: the italian football journalists inquisition. they're gonna rip him apart..
i'm so gonna enjoy this 
rfu said:
Truth is, as Ben stated earlier, this is clearly the worst Italian NT team for quite sometime....
....I'm curious to hear Ben's opinion on De Rossi's general performance in this tournament
not just the worst italian NT in quite some time. we ended the group stage in 4th position, without winning a single match. as a matter of fact, that's the worst performance in italy's history!
as for de rossi, mate, i think he's been heroic, pretty much like montolivo in the the match against new zealand and quagliarella yesterday. coz when u manage to come out with a decent performance in such conditions, then u really got balls!
football is a team sport. there's no way u can play at your best, if your teammates don't even run (never mind playing well).
it's pretty much the same thing i said about juventus, and the same thing could be said about liverpool. this is a team-failure. it's the entire system that collapsed (and lippi sure did his part by changing formation every 20 minutes).
when u have a team with some players doing well and some others doing bad, u can try to analyse the situation and single out some performances.
but when u have an entire team failing, u absolutely can't judge the individuals. we can't judge diego's or chiellini's performances in juve this season, exactly as we can't judge de rossi, montolivo and criscito during this world cup. they were the only ones who tried to keep our engine going.... but 3 players alone can't sustain an entire team falling down.
btw, dude, now u're comparing de rossi to van bommel!!!??
WTF!
edit:
i also wouldn't say he played deep at all. i'm quite sure he's the italy player who had more shots in our 3 matches.... and that is impressive for a defensive midfielder. he, criscito and montolivo were the only ones who actually tried to move the possession line forward. he scored in the first match and earned us a penalty in the 2nd match.... horrible dive that one, sure...... but to gain a penalty u have to be in the box..... that was our holding midfielder in the opponent's box mate.... that is NOT playing deep!
. I still think we have a lot of talent, but the problem is talent that can become leaders or icons that will carry the team. I think we are really lacking a superb young/middle age defender that can replace Cannavaro/Nesta/Maldini's generation, and it could be worrying. We also don't have as good a spine of goalkeepers - in the past we had Pagliuca, Toldo, Peruzzi, Marcheggiani and Buffon etc.... but I don't blame Marchetti at all, and I think we are fine in this department tbh for now..
. I hope he doesn't become Kaladze - by this I mean getting lazy in his new role as CB.
That beak-nosed bastard Chellini is trash, let him go back to LB