In February, the calendar is too crowded, no help for the national team from Serie A and foreign teams. The gathering was designed for the match against Northern Ireland (26 March): «It’s better not to do it like this»
No internships. Rino Gattuso’s fears have become reality. The news is not yet official, but it will become so in the middle of next week when the Football League will announce advances and postponements of two championship days, those of 1 and 8 February and the calendar of the quarter-finals of the Italian Cup.
There doesn’t seem to be any room for changing things. The national team will arrive indoors or outdoors with Northern Ireland, scheduled for March 26 in Bergamo, without the two days of training in Coverciano, invoked to interrupt the four-month-long blue winter. The coach will have to do everything alone. Cith the hope of earning another thrilling night, in Wales or Bosnia, that is to get to the World Cup between the United States, Canada and Mexico. Gattuso will have to prepare the most delicate and important matches of his management in smart working. Phone calls to the players, group dinners and a tour de force of matches to watch live to study whether to include someone in the group, from Bartesaghi to Palestra, passing through Zaniolo, Chiesa and Fagioli.
There was even talk of moving one day of the championship, number 30. But that was never a real hypothesis on the table. However, the internship was. Gattuso was deluded. And instead he had to give up. “If these are the conditions, it’s better not to do it,” he would have said. The story is soon told: the idea, to meet the Italian needs, was to free up two days (plus travel) within one of the first two weeks of February, the 2nd and 3rd or more probably the 9th and 10th, placing in the chosen one only one quarter-final of the Italian Cup and threethe other. In any case, Gattuso would have had to give up the Azzurri involved in the quarter identified to coincide with the internship and those abroad: the clubs outside Italy immediately did not give the green light. But the coach only gave up when he learned that the League would not give up on the postponement of the championship on Monday. So he decided to let it go. It would have been a gathering for a few close friends. A joke.
The internship doesn’t take place, but the question is another: who cares about the good of Italy, which cannot fail in its assault on the third consecutive World Cup? The national team is the daughter of a minor god, not a primary asset of our movement. In the suffering, both economic and in terms of dates, everyone looks to their own backyard: the clubs, the coaches of the clubs themselves, but also the television stations that defend their spaces paid at a high price. FIFA and UEFA have filled the calendar, stressing the system. We only notice Italy when it loses or when it fails to achieve a goal. And if no one takes charge of the problem, the issue will only get worse.
The League will try to bring forward as many matches as possible on the thirtieth matchday of March 22, which will precede the Coverciano meeting: Fiorentina-Inter is scheduled for that Sunday, but if the Viola qualify for the Conference round of 16, arranging the Franchi match even just on Saturday will be impossible. And Gattuso, before Ireland, will only have a couple of training sessions with the full group.
