ITALIA - SLOVACCHIA, ARBITRA L'INGLESE WEBB

(Tanto a Capodimonte l'inglese lo parlano come l'italiano)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/sports/soccer/25italydemise.html?ref=s...
Italy Was the Old Man of Europe
Not since Pompeii has Italy fallen so low. Not since the World Cup format was expanded to include a group-phase first round have the two finalists from the previous tournament departed the next tournament so quickly, and with so little fight.
First France, the beaten finalist of 2006, finished at the bottom of its group. Then Italy, the defending world champion, took the same early route.
Italy’s performances in its three games — ties with Paraguay and, astonishingly, New Zealand, and a 3-2 loss to Slovakia on Thursday — smacked of abdication.
Italy’s coach, Marcello Lippi, stuck to the old guard, the very old guard, of 2006, and told anyone who questioned it that these were the best players Italy possessed. In each game, his captain, Fabio Cannavaro, contributed telling errors that led to goals.
Cannavaro is two months short of his 37th birthday. He looks as if his brain knows where he should be, but the legs will no longer take him there at the required speed. And, of course, this great achiever, the player of the tournament four years ago, should not have been asked to go there this time around.
Lippi, Cannavaro and the broken-down warhorse Gennaro Gattuso retired themselves from national team duty with this wretchedly sorry result. They should have gone sooner. If Lippi is correct, and Italy’s cupboard is so bare that there are no younger men pushing through, then Italy must start the process of a new soccer kindergarten from which to begin the process of resuscitating a sport it has played so well in the past.
“The responsibility is mine,” Lippi confessed at his last news conference as coach. “I prepared the team badly.”
Even that dodges the issue. He chose the team badly. He clung to the past.
But there is something strange at this World Cup. It is as if the Europeans have no stomach, no desire, no professional pride in staying on a continent new to them. It is almost as if they had the jet engines warming up before they arrived — and England did only marginally better in its group, which also looked, on paper, to be a comfortable warm-up.
Thank God for the South Americans. Thank goodness Lionel Messi is here with appetite aflame for the Cup. Thank all of the teams from the Americas — yes, including the United States, the hardest-working athletes of Round 1.
Because those two continents, North and South America, care about the World Cup, because they seem able to adapt to Africa’s daily surprises, we have a worthwhile tournament.
But the scenes of Italians lying on the turf, sobbing for their lost trophy and for themselves, should fool nobody. Fabio Quagliarella, the substitute who came on, scored one of the consolation goals, brawled with Slovakia’s keeper and then wept so bitterly, might have been an exception.
He cared, perhaps too much.
Slovaks would be entitled to ask: So, Italy lost, but what about us with this historic victory?
Surely they deserved to win. But it took them 20 minutes — 20 tedious, frightened, stupendously boring minutes — to realize that Italy had not come to defend its title with any pride. When the Slovaks took the lead, with the first of two goals by Robert Vittek, it was not so much against the run of play as against the grain of such a timid refusal on either side to dare to threaten the opponent.
What were they waiting for? For belief, perhaps. Belief that they might win, belief that Italy was so poor.
When Vittek’s second goal went in, Italy suddenly came out of its shell and for the final 20 minutes so comprehensively outplayed its opponent that it seemed to compound all the negativity with which it has defended its status as world No. 1.
Strike out that last sentence. Italy did not defend its honor any more than France seemed interested in staying at the ball. Good riddance to them, because if athletes are too rich, too tired or too far outside their precious comfort zone to rise to the World Cup, the sooner they depart, the better.
There will be someone — the Argentines, the Brazilians — who want with a passion to pick up the discarded trophy.
There will clearly be more surprises and upsets because there seems to be something unsettling in the South African air to the world’s big-name, big-salary performers.
But as of Thursday only one Italian still seemed interested in the title of world champion. He, Fabio Capello, is England’s coach. We need wonder no longer why Capello chose to coach abroad rather than his own nation.