In a word, Tired.

Tired. Every year at this time as the Serie A ends its grueling run, we see teams run out of steam. Juventus is running on fumes. Milan drew away tonight only due to the tremendous effort of, can you believe it, Dida. Inter has looked interested only intermittently in the last month. On and on and on. And these are teams who can afford to field large squads. Not much can be done about this– fixture congestion and the physical Italian league is a fact of life.

I often wonder if this affects Italy in the first round of the WC tournament; as I get older I become more and more convinced. The Azzurri are notorious for making the group stage a tight rope walk and they get the best game out of their opposition every time they walk on the pitch. I’d prefer to see a ‘lighter’ camp before the tournament begins for that very reason. This group has enough experience together to gel quickly.