Welcome Paul

welcome.
hopefully you are a romanista … hahha

welcome paul!

Italy-New Zeland 0-1..
What exactly is Lippi trying to experiment with this lineup?

haha italy sucks.

3-2…….

iaquintaaaaaaaaaaa

What is the lineup anyway? And how on earth did we concede 3 goals?

Dossena is absolute rubbish.. How he and Pepe start on the national team ahead of some of the other players I have no clue.

Amelia made an error on two set pieces, maybe 1.5. One of them he whiffed, the other he perhaps should have gotten to it but there was poor marking in the box anyways. Then Amelia and Gamberini combined to sandwich a player to concede a PK.

And yet we’re still winning

*We still won, should I say.

Another meaningless friendly win in the bag, another game for Lippi to see what needs working on.

And there’s no way Legrottaglie and Gamberini will be starting together at the Confederations Cup. Or Amelia for that matter.

But I must say, Palombo was pretty disappointing.

Harsh on Palombo considering that his only midfield partner was Gattuso and that Italy played with 4 strikers.

Didn’t catch the whole game, how did Santon play?

Pretty well. Set up a goal and looked confident, I thought Gamberini looked shaky occasionally, but other than that the defenders all looked pretty decent. Not the starting defense, but looked comfortable.

This is what goal.com said, which is the only place I have found that had ratings for friendlies. Take with a grain of salt:

Santon- 6.5: Italy’s best defender while he was on the field. The Inter youngster at least showed some energy going forward.

Was Amelia as bad as goal.com made him out to be?

Yeah, I don’t think Amelia made a save.

A 2 is a bit ridiculous, it was errors of judgements on set pieces, but not like he was palming them into his own net. A 3-4, maybe.

Legro and Gamberini got too low markings. Gamberini did not mark well, true, but let’s be honest, they only reasons they both were trashed is because Italy conceded 3. None of which were really their faults, except 1 for Gamberini.

That penalty was actually all Amelia’s fault. He came out to catch a cross, dropped it, it bounced off Gamberini and into the path of a Kiwi player and then Amelia fouled the player in trying to get it back. On top of that, he let the ball squirm under him on the penalty. Total shit display from him!

from jubilation to embarrassment. how could italy struggle against one of the world’s worst teams? Kiwi’s don’t even like or watch football, yet they can almost beath the world champions at it? Jesus! Lippi is murdering us. I hope he screws up the confeds and gets the sack

I never saw a 2 rating before…

It’s amazing to see people still coming to Amelia’s defense after today’s performance. For somebody of his experience, there’s absolutely no excuse for displaying such level of “ingenuity,” if you can call it that.

*ingenuousity*

I’m not defending him, he was awful today. But a 2?

Leggro played pretty good, Gamberini sucked. Not Azzurri material. Amelia was pretty bad, but Palombo was just horrible.

mike de robbio is right. you guys played poor. so slow. i wouldnt be saying this like: ‘any friendly win in the bag’ etc. was a very average looking team. you didnt even earn a corner and NZ managed 9. for a top european team to play rely on counterattacking goals against a team like nz is laughable. spain will make you guys look silly.
saying its just a friendly etc is no excuse. remember it was just a friendly for a team ranked 82nd in the world too.

another friendly win in the bad*

bag. whoops

To Peter vdL, the Italy team last night was a mixed bag from the 2nd and 3rd 11s, yet they still beat Australia (New Zealand’s part of Australia right? lol). Also, the Italy players don’t want to hurt or tire themselves against a country they’ve never heard of (they’re football players, not very educated, I’ve heard of you, don’t worry) whilst (as Quagliarella said) NZ will massively raise their game.
LASTLY, for fuck’s sake, this stupid bloody myth, ooh, wait till you play Spain, ooh Spain, they’ll score a million goals. What happened last time we played Spain? We had a rubbish coach, a demoralised squad, no Gattuso, Cannavaro, Pirlo (fuck it, we had no Nesta or Materazzi either) and how many did Spain score in their greatest run of form in their entire history???
No really, I can’t remember, was it 57 or 58? Who cares, I forget. But now Italy have a real coach again (I’m sure the WC squad will lose the dross(ena)) and Spain have a joke coach in Del Bosque.
If they win the Confederations and WC even, fair play, but a) it’s unlikely and b) even if they do beat Italy on the way, it’ll be by one scrappy goal.
Idiot.

P.S. Can we all please take Spain’s balls out of our mouths?

Spain is only one of the big teams to watch… Have you guys seen Brazil recently? Or the Netherlands? Or how about what Capello’s been doing over on the island?

But I still think we’re more than a challenge for any team- nay, better than any team- on our day, with the right players.