One game. One more win and we are through to South Africa without having to worry about playoffs. One more match: a convincing enough display will keep the critics off Lippi for a while, at least until the call ups for next year come out. But even more importantly, a win against the strongest team [...]

There is no doubt in my mind as to who the best goalie is world football is today. Not Cech, not Van Der Sar, and not Casillas. Buffon stands alone as the best goalie of the modern era, and maybe even all time.

I’d be thrilled.

In a lot of ways, this is the most important game remaining in our qualifying campaign. To see what I mean, look at the current standings in our group (credit Wiki):

I feel like I give Lippi a pretty decent amount of slack. I call him out for not calling up players that I feel would improve the NT, but overall I feel like he knows the technical side of the game (though it took him what, almost a year to go back to the 4-4-2?). [...]

It’s starting to become a familiar story. We play a team in a WCQ that we should easily beat. We stumble/luck our way to a victory. We’re all left with a sour flavor in our mouths.
Full writeup on the game.
To answer the question in the title, yes- a victory has felt like this in nearly [...]

First and most importantly, Cannavaro looks to be back. No he’s not the same player he used to be. Yes, he is slow. Yes, we’re in an transition stage and in desperate need of youth, but it’s pretty clear that our back line is in desperate need of experience. Expect Legro to sit on the [...]

Let’s get things out of the way. Spain is obviously a heavy favorite for the trophy. If they weren’t before, after seeing them today, they definitely are now. Sure they played a pretty easy team but scoring 5 is nevertheless impressive. I hope for nothing more than us to meet them and get our revenge [...]

The friendly between Italy and North Ireland was very impressive. Very impressive indeed. I saw something that I hadn’t seen for 3 years- a truly hungry Azzurri that also played some nice football.

Lotsa things filled up recently: squads, coaches, my glass of chocolate milk. Let’s discuss them!