Championship Day 1 and Game 1 of the Euro 2012 Qualifiers

      Hello All, and welcome back from the long break.  The World Cup may be long over, but its effects are still felt in the football world.  Many teams disappointed their fans, and a number of federations agree that serious rebuilding is needed to return to former heights of glory, or at least for a respectable team.  There were two main criticisms of the Italian national side.  The first is that the players were too old.  This is still a point of contention as several days before the start of Serie A, an article on Yahoo! Italia claimed that the players in the Italian league are among the oldest in the world.  Too much emphasis on big names, established players and their overblown reputations, and too little on young and up and coming domestic talent.

      The second criticism was that the team was made up of Lippi's men and the Juventus crew, rather than the best Italian players.  Well, with new CT Cesare Prandelli, there are still a lot of Juventini who represent the Italian side; but I should point out it's because Juventus bought Simone Pepe from Udinese and Fabio Quagliarella from Napoli.  Prandelli also called up ex-Juventus defender Molinaro, now at Stoccarda.  Now, if you haven't noticed, the new call up list is full of former Prandelli players from his stints at Parma and Fiorentina: Alberto Gilardino, Cesare Bovo, Lorenzo De Silvestri, Giampaolo Pazzini, Angelo Palumbo and Riccardo Montolivo.  In my opinion, these are great choices, and I have been wondering for years why Cesare Bovo had not been called up for national team duty.  He played for the Under-21 with De Rossi and Aquilani.  But are we replacing a one-man team with another?  Many were outraged at the overabundance of Juventus players during the World Cup chiefly because La Vecchia Signora finished seventh.  Why pick players from a side that barely made the Europa League, when many quality Roma, Milan and Sampdoria players, who qualified for the Champions League, were left at home?  Is the national side faring better with a cluster of Prandelli men from Fiorentina and Parma, both of whom finished even lower than Juventus last year?  So far, the results are on Prandelli's side.  Italy's 2-1 win over Estonia was her first victory of 2010.  A modest adversary and a modest result, but still a win and three points.

     The first day of Serie A proved to be full of unexpected results.  Milan was the only "big" who won their opening match, and it was a resounding 4-0 victory over newly promoted Lecce, the winners of Serie B last year.  Roma, Inter, Napoli, Catania and Palermo all tied, and Juventus lost.  Genoa won the opening game of the season with a goal from midfielder Giandomenico Mesto, a former Under-21 player.  When is this guy going to make the national side?  Nothing has been lost as the season is very long.  Last season, Roma lost her first two games and came within a hair's breadth of winning the title.  Palermo came back in the second half of the season and almost qualified for the Champions League.  And Inter is, well, Inter, with as deep a bench as you can have and a seemingly bottomless bank account to keep it that way.

     I think the more interesting angles this year will be if the Italian clubs put more faith in their younger players, both domestic and international, and how the smaller national teams fare with the "big ones."  Estonia certainly kept the Italians on the edge of their seats for a while last Saturday, and Bielorus put the French back in their places in their own home field, despite the much more vibrant and dynamic French side.  Ireland, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Turkey had important wins last week.  Let's see if they can maintain the momentum and stability over the next year and a half.