In 1938 Italy went to France and shrugged off protests and wild unpopularity to successfully defend their World Cup crownThe critical moment was … when our players raised their hands to give the fascist salute … I entered the stadium with our players, lined-up military style, and stood on the right. At the salute we predictably met with a solemn and deafening barrage of whistles, insults and remarks. It seemed like we were in Italy so much did the expressions resound of our idioms and dialects. How long that rumpus lasted I couldn’t say. I was rigid, with an arm outstretched horizontally I couldn’t check the time. The German referee and Norwegian players looked at us worriedly. At a certain...
Gareth Southgate’s most pressing need at Wembley was for his players to show something in attack against Italy – and Sterling and Vardy were happy to obligeOn Wembley Way before kick-off a louche, drowsy New Orleans‑style jazz band dressed in Three Lions shirts could be heard parping and tootling away, serenading the strolling crowds. At the time it seemed a slightly off‑key soundtrack to another outing for this guarded, orderly England team, like cutting the highlights of a chess match to the soundtrack to the Benny Hill show.Three hours later it was probably all for the best that England had failed to keep their sixth successive clean sheet on another mannered, quietly intriguing night for this doggedly constructed team. When it...
Assured victory in Amsterdam is more proof that the coach’s plan of canny possession football is not just empty chatterLast month Gareth Southgate did a long broadcast interview with the journalist Guillem Balagué. It kicked off with Balagué lobbing up a soft one, asking England’s manager what album he would choose to keep if he could listen to only one.Rather than just doing the decent thing and saying, yeah, I listen to Drake in the car, Southgate went on to talk – for absolutely ages – about how lucky he was to have been in so many dressing rooms, to have been exposed to different kinds of music, different genres and cultures. Continue reading...
The striker granted just 15 minutes of Italy’s play-off defeat against Sweden continued the scintillating club form that made his omission so controversialIt was a weekend for gallows humour in Italy. “Goals from [Ciro] Immobile and [Lorenzo] Insigne yesterday,” tweeted the wags from Chiamarsi Bomber on Sunday. “So we qualified, right?”In truth, it will take a lot more than a week for a nation to digest its World Cup play-off defeat to Sweden. Gian Piero Ventura was fired as manager of the Azzurri last week, and the Football Federation president Carlo Tavecchio resigned on Monday amid reports that his support base had crumbled. Related: European roundup: Juventus stumble in Serie A title race with loss to Sampdoria Related: All players...
Goalkeeper’s last international was marred by Italy’s disastrous failure to qualify for the World Cup but as the embodiment of the sternest resistance and generosity of spirit, the 39-year-old has few peersGianluigi Buffon was born in Carrara, the Tuscan city where they quarried the marble for Michelangelo’s David 500 years ago. Maybe even now there is a fresh slab being carved out, ready for a statue of Italy’s greatest goalkeeper, who left the international scene in tears this week after his team’s goalless draw with Sweden cost them a place in next summer’s World Cup finals but whose deeds guarantee him a place in the game’s history.What even the most gifted sculptor could never capture would be the sheer dynamism...