Italy’s elimination told us many things – Sportellate

Especially on what didn’t work around the national team.

Is it possible to find something even more unpleasant in an elimination from a world championship that is already unpleasant for how it materialized? The answer is affirmative and lies in the fact that, once again, ended up feeding the most tragicomic reactionary instincts of public opinion on women’s football, summarized in the inevitable sentence “against a Serie C men’s team they would have lost 7-0”. A phrase that is simply inconceivable for all those sports, practiced at a competitive level, where there is no mixed discipline – and football, not surprisingly, is no exception. Why should the women’s national team play against a random Serie C team? Why should it set its own level compared to a low professional men’s club? But above all, how would this relate to Italy’s elimination from the Women’s World Cup? We don’t know that the 3-2 defeat against South Africa happened against the African country’s men’s national team.

It gets tiring to talk about sports like this. So, just for fun, let’s make a final digression on the commentators. Like, a comment made me laugh bitterly where Orsi’s own goal, a back pass to the goalkeeper in the mirror, was defined “stuff you don’t see in Serie D”. And immediately I was reminded of that famous Parma-Milan 4-5 of almost a decade ago, with two expulsions, an incredible back-heel goal scored by Menez and an own goal by De Sciglio almost identical in terms of dynamics, with Diego Lopez who, after wrong the stop collapses due to an injury that made so much talk. But then how can you not think of Consigli and Padelli kicking on goal; to Pau Lopez who in a derby argues with the crossbar or Goicoichea who rejects a cross from the back into his own net; and what about the 2018 World Cup final, a match opened by Mandzukic with a surgical header but into the wrong goal, and closed in the score again by the former Juve thanks to Lloris’ duck. In short, I don’t think you need to go down to Serie D to see similar comedies.

A type of mistake that hasn’t spared even a former (male) national team defender and his current goalkeeper, for example.

It is not a problem of Federico Castiglioni’s movement

Having said that, we can go beyond this classic post-disaster soup tinged with prejudice, which brings together women’s football in general, the national team and the championship – all things that, with different tones, can also be heard for men, remember the “poor championship” and “Crespo would score 40 goals today”? – as if they weren’t three very different entities, albeit communicating. And going further, the objective disappointment remains for Italy’s short run in Australia-New Zealand. Because, although the premises were not good at all, the technical level of our group, and in particular of South Africa and Argentina, still made the possibility of grabbing the second round concrete.

It would be simplistic to bring everything back to a single factor, especially that of the physical and technical gap from which the Azzurri would suffer. In the meantime, we must start from the negative climate, in and around the blue expedition, incidentally almost ignored by the Federation which, however, had flaunted some of its “political” merits on the professionalisation of the championship. Climate that has stagnated on the national team for at least a year, since elimination in the group stage of Euro 2022 and related white semester – but twelve months long – of CT Bertolini. CT who at the end of the continental tournament – and with qualification for the world championship already assured – found himself in an obvious contradiction: to start the “generational change” with delay of the blue group that had reached the quarter-finals of the 2019 World Cup in France and do so without a wider time perspective than that given by this year’s World Cup.

Of course, group turnover wasn’t the only problem for Italy. Nor the fact that, probably, Bertolini too would have had to re-enter the “scrapping” process that she started. Indeed, the management of this spare part seems to have exacerbated difficulties and old grievances. The exclusion of Sara Gama from the squad and the relegation of Girelli – despite being appointed new captain – in the attack hierarchies have left the unpleasant feeling of final settlement of accounts, rather than opening up to a new green Line among the girls. And the only result was to further undermine the team’s certaintiesfor which the absence of technical references has translated into the field with a constant anxiety in the game, an easily perceptible sense of fear.

The green rectangle above all showed this of the blues, something that goes far beyond the technical limits which, we repeat, are difficult to appeal to compared to South Africa and Argentina. Fears and uncertainties, combined with the lack of even the slightest “safety net”; of a system of game principles tested and assimilated. The lack of solid references, of basic offensive and defensive solutions capable of enhancing the merits and minimizing the defects of the players, all of this has stripped back that feeling of a team put on the field in disarray, where curiously but not too much what was lost was above all the “old guard”, while the very young like Dragoni still managed to assert themselves.

In terms of performance, the overlapping of these factors has determined above all the elimination of the blues. Just to return to the parallels, that of Bertolini’s now former national team is a situation that is very reminiscent of that of the more or less recent gaffes of the men’s national teams, from the two World Cups not played by the senior national team to the elimination of the Under 21 team in the European category group. And perhaps it is no coincidence that these complications have not affected, for example, the last cycles of the men’s Under 19 and Under 20 in which, albeit with difficulty, we are managing to work continuously both in terms of enhancing young people and that of tactical coherence.

Personally I find it not very serious to seek direct and short-term correlations between the elusive “state of health of the movement” and the results of the women’s national team. For one thing, Japan, despite having a pool of members slightly larger than ours and a small national league that has only been professional for a year, not only has a history of results of a much higher level than the blues, but has already in this tournament he made his exploits, such as the 4-0 with Spain and consequent group victory.

And what happened to the physical gap of the Japanese?

The development and growth of Italian women’s football should be on a level that cannot be dependent on the progress of the blue selection. Having understood this, it is necessary to underline again that this expedition, which started badly and ended worse, is undoubtedly a disappointment. But it’s a disappointment precisely because, despite everything, women’s Italy would be worth something more than an elimination in the first round.

An elimination that comes from afar by Marialaura Scatena

“Ask your mum, she’ll listen to you”if you’ve never heard of it, it’s because you were probably the one who told your brothers or sisters. It’s a simple thing: if there’s one thing to do in a group of two to many, it’s whoever knows how to do it best. After the exclusion from the World Cup of Australia and New Zealand, it was Cristiana Girelli who spoke, not surprisingly awarded the rank of captain before departure. “I think it’s normal to wonder why a national team that has that block of players (Roma and Juve ed) has such a hard time first in a European and then in a World Cup”said the captain. “It could certainly have achieved different results, if only it had been put in the best conditions to be able to do so.”

To understand what was said, we also need to understand who said it and why it has been so much at the center of controversy in recent weeks. 7 goals in 8 qualifying matches for the 2019 World Cup, where she then scored the only Italian hat-trick in a women’s world cup; 9 goals in 10 qualifying matches for the 2022 European Championship and another 8 in ten qualifying matches for the 2023 World Cup. Cristiana Girelli is the best Italian goalscorer in business, as well as the only one to have scored in two editions of the World Cup. Cristiana Girelli, designated Italy’s “Key Player” by FIFA, was kept on the bench in her opening match against Argentina until about five minutes from the end after having already watched the 2019 quarter-final from the bench.

As she entered, she headed in one of the many crosses that had rained into the area before her without a recipient like the stars at San Lorenzo, and scored the winning goal. In the second race, again, he didn’t see the field. In the third, from inside or outside, she was deployed when there was about half an hour left to go, she put her head on the first corner kick and gave birth to the equalizer, then rightly assigned to Caruso for the scores who came close with the body.

The shot of the 3-2 instead remained in the barrel. It seemed like something done to put the ball into the net that arrived from the right after a good incursion by Cantore, but the goalkeeper rejected it with his feet. And it was from here that Girelli’s examination of the following day started: “I start by saying that obviously the missed goal at 2-2 is a boulder that weighs me down and it echoed in my head all night” she said, but then moved on. She didn’t rightly stop at the single; you claimed the quality of the group, referring in particular to the girls of Juventus and Rome who have alternated at the helm of Serie A in the last two years, also doing well in the Champions League.

As we often read in some facebook posts, halfway between glitter and lions, which incredibly sometimes turn out to be true: “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb trees, it will spend its whole life believing itself stupid”. So why force Giacinti to play with his back to goal and raise the team when his vocation is deep attack? Why force Bonansea to always play without proper support? Why leave Greggi’s intensity on the bench? Elsewhere, the players from Rome and Juve are doing their thing, from Sophie Roman Haug’s overwhelming power with Norway to Pauline Peyraud-Magnin’s routine with France. So why doesn’t Italy work? Many black and white and yellow and red are blue, but evidently on the pitch, quoting Girelli literally, something else was missing.

When there is the possibility of deploying Salvai and Linari, Greggi and Caruso, Serturini and Cantore, the game lies in seeking balance, in the Tetris-like joint, there can’t always and only be the long-limbed piece that solves everything for you as Girelli has been in this world championship and what another one could be like in the future. This is not a fox hunt: the athletes know better and sooner than who tells if their performances are sufficient, good or disappointing. Giugliano will have become aware of having played below his standards, as well as Bonansea, just to name two, but the analysis of a defeat that seems to be the daughter of that of the European cannot be resolved only in the examination of the individual performances.

When Elisa Bartoli entered, and whoever denies lies, we all had a flash: Daniele De Rossi who, in the sixtieth match of Italy-Sweden, tells Giampiero Ventura that he invites him to enter “Dovemo wins, not draws”. Yesterday a draw would have been enough, but it vanished even when it seemed in our hands, in the third match of a team that couldn’t find each other. There are many regrets, lasting at least a couple of years. Responsibilities are to be shared from top to bottom. And not only on the pitch, where there are fresh ingredients for the future and a good cook is needed, but outside, further away from training camps and changing rooms; right on the other side.

2023-08-03 14:00:00
#Italys #elimination #told #Sportellate