Custodian of the Styx.

December 29th, 2011 | by: gadsby | Comments Off

In the last few months, m’colleague Sam and I have exhaustively covered La Nazionale’s options on most fronts, though there is one vitally important area that we, in our base human foolishness, have neglected to mention, the most vital position of them all, the position that, if it were not tended, would result in defeat of the most abominable scale. 17-0 sort of thing, if you know what I mean.   Yes, the position I refer to is undoubtedly that of the goalkeeper, a vital role in which the Azzurri are, to use the football cliche (a term which is in itself becoming a cliche) of the century, in safe hands.

I don’t think it is in any dispute who our starting goalkeeper is. Gianluigi Buffon has recently found his top form once more after a somewhat rough patch over the last few years, and, despite being nearly 34, is still by far and wide Gli Azzurri’s most able ‘keeper. Barring injury, I think we can all agree that Buffon should be an automatic inclusion.

As for Prandelli’s second choice in the grey shirt, fate is looking on in the favour of Napoli’s 34 year old goalkeeper Morgan De Sanctis, who has similarly been having a vastly impressive season, and would, in my opinion, be first choice if it were not for Buffon’s history of excellence for the national team. As such, I, just as Prandelli will, would confine him to the bench, perhaps playing him for a few friendlies in the build up to the tournament, much like Lippi did in 2010 with Federico Marchetti, a player whom I believe was referred to in Calcio Italia as “a worthy reserve to Buffon”. How wrong they were….

Federico Marchetti, in fact, has actually done quite well with himself since the debacle in the nation to the immediate south of Botswana. A somewhat controversial summer signing for Lazio, the Bassano born keeper has done extraordinarily well at the Aquile, proving himself a more than adequate replacement for the inconsistent genius of Fernando Muslera. While the images of him bungling the ball into his own net at….. I’m going to stop typing right here…. are still fresh in the memory, it’s never too late to make a change, and, in my opinion, Marchetti deserve one last chance to prove his worth to the Azzurri, particularly after this excellent spell of form in the capital.

Another potential Azzurri third choice, returning from injury is Inter’s Emiliano Viviano, who impressed somewhat last season on a co-ownership deal at Bologna, returning to the nerazzurri courtesy of a clerical error. Viviano, often thought of as one of the most promising young keepers in Italy, is in fact 26. This narrowly qualifies him to be a member of the Inter first team, who are incidentally in need of a goalie, what with Luca Castellazzi’s wounds picked up from the Napoleonic wars acting up for a potentially final time, and Julio Cesar simply being Julio Cesar. While it’s looking unlikely, there is still hope for the nerazzurri reserve custodian to get a look in with Prandelli. As a bit of an afterthought, does Paolo Orlandoni still exist?

More likely than not we will see P$G’s $alvatore $irigu warming the bench as third choice goalkeeper. Sirigu, one of Walter Zenga’s better finds, seems to be strangely popular with the tifosi, despite doing very little for La Nazionale at all. In fairness, Sirigu does have going for him the fact that he’s not Federico Marchetti, but other than that, I’m not greatly impressed. To be fair, he’s only a third choice, so I wouldn’t be too worried at his inclusion.

Discuss.