Weak Men, Weak Destinies – AndriaLive.it

“A technical and character shipwreck”. These are the words of Paolo Condò, to the microphones of Sky Sport 24at the end of the game.
A clear snapshot of the “Italian disaster” at the 2024 European Championships. It is there, right in the stadium “The sky is blue above Berlin”which disintegrates every feeble expectation of a race to the European Championships which was already compromised since 9.01pm on 15 June, when millions of Italians, gathered together, while settling in front of the television screens, watched helplessly as the advantage of the mammoth Albania against Italy.
There we should have immediately understood that this is the ugliest Italy ever.
A technically poor national team, with few good players and a plethora of mid-low ranking players, incapable of teamwork.

And the inability to play orchestrally has put the Italian fans to the test. More tattoos than passescould be the claim for this European edition.
A national team incapable of expressing an identity and a coach who was only right about a well-known statement dating back to 2023: “Weak men, weak destinies”.
Because they were weak men. A team without a soul: not a striker capable of (at least) attempting to score, a midfield worthy of the worst Lombard team coached by Oronzo Canà, a defense of inepts in disarray.
An Italy with poor character, incapable of pressing, attacking the ball, holding their own against the opponent, incapable even of claiming a clear penalty against Switzerland that could have changed the outcome of the match.

What was our national team’s game like? We didn’t understand it and maybe we never will.
A band from a porchetta festival rather than an orchestra. And a conductor, Lucianone di Certaldo, who looked more like Maestro Pregadio, at the Corrida. After the feat of Naples, the result of astral conjectures and alignments Moon-Earth-Veiled Christ that repeat once every Kvaradona, we saw 6 modules changed and only 10 shots in 4 games, putting right backs on the left, making 5 brainless substitutions, starting, in the eighth finals, players who had not touched the field in the group stage. The result, an obscene Italy in which only the avenger Donnarumma, goalkeeper for 1 against 11, is saved.

The days of the BBC in defense are over but they cannot become those of Di Lorenzo, Darmian and Mancini either. We no longer have Totti, Del Piero, Pirlo, Cannavaro. But we can’t be satisfied with Scamacca, Retegui, Jorginho and Di Marco if Immobile, Insigne and Colpani are left at home on a whim of Lucianone “Bellicapelli”.
Now head to the World Cup and, in a more far-sighted way, to the next Italian cycle.

The National team starts again from the bottom, from the Football Schools, from street football, the one on the serrated fields of the oratories, the one where the children of NN play, who do not have the money to pay for their careers and tattoos and cannot become part of those vicious circles accustomed to do ut des of a certain way of playing football, in Italy and around the world, in the hands of criminals and troublemakers.
And in football schools, 6-7-8 year old boys and girls are given space for creativity, dribbling, imagination, and are not taught to play with just two touches. Creativity and imagination, precisely, what is missing not only from the Azzurri but from our country in general.

The National team starts again from the young people who want to grow, not from those with their heads in Ibiza where the influencers of the moment are waiting for them. The National team starts again from Made in Italy, not just the food one (and the absence of players from the Rossoneri side among the ranks of the Azzurri, says a lot, in this historical moment).
The FIGC and Gravina start again from the value of the “blue” shirt and from the concept of cohesion which is renewed every time the 11 of the national team take the field for a European or World competition. From Italy which stops because it needs to feel, for once, united around the same objective.

As happened on Saturday, in our city and in all the cities of Italy, when at 6pm, the silence in the streets and the friendly chatter that came from the homes of the Italians, told of families and friends together, of a people divided on everything but capable of coming together, only and once again, around the blue shirt to scream one more time “Go Italy!” without damaging the sensitivity of left-wing voters.
We soon finished with the big screens in the streets of our city and in the oratories and with the smell of focaccia and panzerotti coming from the wide open windows of those who prepared for armies of friends who, under the pretext of a match, decided to stay together, to feel like brothers of Italy, all on the same side, without autonomy and differentiation. With all due respect to Giorgia Nazionale.
Until the next world competition. Let’s hope… since we haven’t played one since 2014.