Of international players, who were hit with tennis results, you see less and less. Indeed there are almost none, according to the results of the start of the Brazilian Mundial. Iran has held up very well to Nigeria. The United States wiped out Ghana. Only Honduras surrendered to France but played nearly an hour outnumbered. Costa Rica even scrambled Cavani's Uruguay by beating them 3-1. And now in the group he shares the lead with Italy in view of this Friday's clash in Recife.
For blue football, intoxicated by the success against the English, the goal by Joel Campbell and his companions on the "celestial" - which right at the Maracana against Brazil in 1950 graduated for the second time world champion - is a good warning to stay focused. “A healthy fear”, says De Rossi in the Mangaratiba retreat. It certainly won't be a walk in the park, even if comparing their respective football movements it is the classic match between David and Goliath. The one in Recife on paper has all the air of belonging to that category of matches which have proved to be sensational pitfalls for the Italian national team, precipitating it into the underworld of football.
Pak Doo Ik, it is enough to mention this name to put shivers and shame on the national tread, the printer enlisted in the Pyongyang army, a footballer by choice of the regime, who has even transformed the word Korea from a purely geographical term into a synonym for defeat in our dictionaries , condemning Edmondo Fabbri, the coach of the blue expedition to the 1966 English World Cup, to an existence of torment, as if after that unfortunate match in Middlesbrough he had become the great traitor of his country.
By chance, Fabbri died on 8 July 1995, exactly the same day in which 29 years earlier he had landed in England at the helm of the national team to play for the World Cup after four post-war editions, each more inauspicious than the last ( even in 1958, the year of Pele's revelation, we didn't qualify for the finals in Sweden!). The approach march had been exciting: six goals for Finland, Poland and Bulgaria, three for Denmark, Scotland and Argentina and five for Mexico in the last test before flying to England.
Even in their debut, the Azzurri sparked: two goals from Barison and Mazzola knocked out Chile, avenging the defeat suffered in the stormy match four years earlier at the World Cup in Santiago. Not even the limited defeat against the Soviets (goal from Cislenko) raised major concerns in the blue clan. To qualify, it would have been enough to get rid of North Korea, an absolute stranger on planet football that Ferruccio Valcareggi, Fabbri's deputy, had gone to spy on, sarcastically calling it "a team of giggles".
But on the evening of July 19, the date of the meeting, there was very little to laugh about. On the contrary, a dry diagonal from Pak Doo-Ik, who slipped into Albertosi's goal in the 42nd minute of the first half, sent the Italian millionaires home early among the mockery of the world. A country went haywire for a sports drama that each of us is still well aware of today where he lived it. Personally I was on the Stelvio at the Pirovano Hut where even in the summer you could ski on the glacier that is no longer there. Summer time had just been introduced for the first time and the evening shadows never seemed to extinguish the last rays of the sun. But it was already pitch black in Middlesbrough.
Fabbri never got rid of the shame of that defeat, which accompanied him by depriving him of sleep and even a few years of life. And yet, Italy has made a lot of fools against the "nationals of Ridolini", to use Valcareggi's words, after the Korean one which was the mother of all defeats. Another Korea, that of South, with the clear help of a corrupt referee like the Ecuadorian, Byron Moreno – who later ended up in jail for drug dealing – was fatal to another of our big players on the bench, Giovanni Trapattoni, defeated round of 2002 at the XNUMX Japanese-Korean World Cup from Ahn's golden goal (who played for Gaucci's Perugia).
Even a winner like Marcello Lippi ended up in the dock for the humiliating performance of the Azzurri at the South African World Cup, last in a group that had nothing but the legs and minds of the Italian players and their coach. We drew in the opening match against Paraguay and that's okay but no one could have imagined that in the second game Shane Edward would become a sort of New Zealand Pad Doo-Ik by scoring the goal of his life which the crazy blue troop barely managed to equalize in the end with Iaquinta .
Having not even beaten New Zealand full of amateurs, the authentic Cinderella of the tournament, the Azzurri were practically kicked out of the World Cup. Hamsik's subsequent defeat against the Slovak Republic – another bad game to forget – put an end to Lippi's blue adventure, who had returned to the national team convinced he was repeating the German triumph of four years earlier. But, Rossi and Cassano rejected, Balotelli still immature, Lippi had churned out a modest national team, which had already managed to lose to Egypt the year before at the Confederations Cup.
Dignified with the strong, Italy always risks running amok with the weak. Even Cesare Prandelli, Lippi's successor, immediately noticed the vulnerability of the Italian football, soft and listless with opponents he doesn't consider of rank. The 2-2 draw with Haiti – eliminated on the way to the World Cup by Antigua & Barbuda – on the eve of the 2013 Confederations Cup, too many defeats in often useless friendlies, the draw with Luxembourg on the eve of this Brazilian World Cup. History repeats itself too often not to be dangerous. This is why in view of Costa Rica it is better that in Mangaratiba there is some "healthy fear" of which De Rossi spoke, which bans Italy that nobody likes: the snooty and irritating one that suffers against Malta , who loses in Iceland and who struggles to score even against the Faroe Islands.
