An All Too Familiar story

Wait I’m missing the point. Who’s the hard team here?

Wow I meant to have a post up about this earlier but I completely forgot to hit “publish”. Here’s what it would’ve been:

The draw for the Euro 2012, which will take place in Poland and Ukraine, happened today. Italy was placed in a group containing the following teams:

Serbia, Northern Ireland, Slovenia, Estonia, Faroe Islands

Overall, it’s a decent group. The latter three are pretty big lightweights and are basically minnows on the international stage. Northern Ireland are a solid, compact team which could cause us a few problems, and then there’s Serbia. Goal.com has an entire article about how they’re our bogey team, so they’re definitely the team to keep an eye on. So it’s not a terribly bad group but we can’t overestimate it either. When the time comes, we can’t stroll through the group like we’re favorites even though we might be. Each game has to be taken seriously.

Then again, we’ve been in much tougher groups recently- just look at our Euro 2008 group which had both France and Scotland. Different time, yes, but still a hard group. Qualifying starts in September.

Finally, it’s hard to get excited about this with the World Cup just a few months away. Once that’s done with, then we can focus on Euro 2012 a lot more.

Posted from  United States

Just isn’t as easy as other possible draws, I’d rank it second or third in difficulty compared to the other groups. And the way we play in qualifying, who knows what can happen. Drop 1 to Serbia and we could have an issue.

Posted from  United States

wow this a difficult group both serbia and slovenia are in the WC this year and North of Ireland are no pushovers

so how we going to qualify? because in EURO 2012 there will be 24 teams

Julian: How exactly are Slovenia lightweights? They are going to be in South Africa having knocked off Russia in the playoffs and they also qualified for the 2002 World Cup. Plus Northern Ireland who you didn’t call lightweights lost to Slovenia twice in World Cup qualifying if I’m not mistaken.

Posted from  United States

Wow horrible bout of temporary dyslexia on my part. I could’ve sworn that said “Cyprus” when I read the release this morning on what the draws were. My bad.

Indeed, Slovenia are a really good team. Better than North Ireland, like you said, and that shows that our group for this really isn’t as simple as it could be. It’s not killer like last Euro but it’s going to be rather competitive.

Posted from  United States

im looking forward to this tournament….Wonder what our team will be like then? Hopefully a fresh start after the world cup with a new manager and some younger talent.

Posted from  Australia

this is an easy group. If we have difficulties here we should not be going to the european championships. It isn’t a pushover group like we just encountered for the wc qualifiers, but it’s not the most difficult grouping of teams.

With that being said, if we go into this task with remotely the same sort of team makeup we’ve seen up until this point, we will not be qualifying for euro 2012.

Also, why no mention that lippi did not attend the draw.

TIME FOR CASSANO AND ANCELLOTTI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

From footballitalia:

“Italy are among the seeds for today’s Euro 2012 qualifying draw in Warsaw, but Marcello Lippi won’t be attending.

The Azzurri boss remains in Italy to watch this weekend’s Serie A games, although many see an ulterior motive for his absence.

Lippi’s contract expires after this summer’s World Cup and he is not expected to remain, so President Giancarlo Abete will represent the Azzurri at the draw instead, which begins at 11.00 GMT.”

Take it what you will but I don’t expect Lippi on the bench for us either after this summer even if we repeat.

Posted from  United States

Im hoping it’s either prandelli or ranieri, that’s all. After this nightmarish 3 years I would like to see some change in the right direction.

I’d love to see Prandelli there but I think it’d be unfair to Fior to take him.

Posted from  United States

Regardless of who is coach, I can’t really see Italy having much problems in this group

Posted from  Barbados

Anyone but Lippi.

this guy cleary dont know what hes talking about,italias a 4 world cup winning team,wheres the hard team??? northern ireland?? estonia, serbia?? yes,maybe.But the rest should be a breeze.And balotelli would be a great addition to the team,he was born in italy,his parents are from ghana,my parents were born in italy but im an american CUS I WAS BORN HERE,the person who posted this article also said he wasnt italian,i guess cus hes black,and thinks that blacks can only be born in africa,i guess hes never seen the french national team!

Posted from  United States