The Olympics

So the next time we see the Azzurri in action (albeit, a very young version of the Azzurri. Except for Rocchi, who looks about 47) will be during the Olympics. The soccer event begins on August 7th, with Italy taking on Honduras. And maybe, just maybe, Italy can buck a recent trend and take home the gold.

Italy’s group (D) for Beijing consists of Honduras, Cameroon, and the Korea Republic. Now, I’m going to be honest with you. I don’t know most people on these teams. Hell, I can’t name a single person under the age of 23 for any of these teams without looking at Wikipedia. But Italy doesn’t have Brazil, Argentina, or other big guns in its group, so on paper this should be an easy group stage. This should actually be a cakewalk because there’s no players like Messi (read: young phenoms who could probably win the games on thier own) on these teams, but then again, since I don’t really know them I have no idea how good they are. What I do know is that we have a beast of a team and that Rossi will score 17 goals this tourney. You heard it here first.

Speaking of major tournaments, there’s something about Italy recently and making it to the finals. And then losing them. Like the U19 team did, Italy’s Beach Soccer World Cup team made it to the final. Unfortunately, they faced a little team called Brazil who won 5-3. Beach soccer is an odd sport- there’s 3 halfs from what I understand (so technically, they’re “thirds”, not halfs but that’s just semantics)- but it sucks to see Italy stumble again at the last step. On a more optimistic note, the country must be in pretty damn good soccer shape if they reached the finals of 2 major tournaments in a week. Now it’s the Olympic squad’s turn in a tourney, and hopefully they can make that final step and grab the gold.