A fan at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport attempts to lift Roberto Donadoni’s spirits, as Italy return defeated from Euro 2008.
ROME — Four days after Italy’s exit from Euro 2008, the country’s football federation, the FIGC, yesterday announced the termination of Roberto Donadoni’s contract as the national team’s head coach. He will be replaced by Marcello Lippi, who led Italy to World Cup victory in Germany in 2006. Donadoni’s contract contained a clause stating it would only be renewed should Italy reach the Euro 2008 semi-finals — the Azzurri fell at the quarter-final stage, losing on penalties to Spain, leaving federation president Giancarlo Abete with no alternative. “I’m sorry this situation should be determined by a penalty,” said Donadoni as he left the FIGC headquarters in Rome. “But one match can’t erase the positive progress my Italy has made in these two years.” Abete had even approached Donadoni on the eve of the tournament to offer a healthy compensation package should Italy fail, which the former Livorno and Genoa coach refused to accept: “It’s not a question of money,” he said.
Spain goalkeeper Iker Casillas made saves from Daniele De Rossi (top) and Antonio Di Natale (above), as Italy crashed out of the Euro 2008 quarter-final after a penalty shoot-out.
I’ve always felt a tad sorry for Donadoni — after all, this is the man who missed a penalty in the semi-final shoot-out against Argentina at Italia ’90. Years later, after appearing in the World Cup final at USA ’94, and following the conclusion of an illustrious playing career with Milan (with a brief parenthesis at New York Metrostars), he took lowly Livorno to the upper echelons of Serie A, only to be fired by the team’s petulant president, Aldo Spinelli, for “lack of coaching experience.” Donadoni certainly did lack big club experience when he took over the national side in August 2006. With the euphoria surrounding Italy’s World Cup win still in the air, it was always going to be a challenge for Donadoni to assert his own identity on the newly-crowned world champions, and he suffered criticism throughout his reign as coach for sticking by too many of Italy’s aging World Cup winners. Lippi’s shadow loomed over Donadoni, right until the end.
The decision to recall Lippi is certainly a strange one, though perhaps typically conservative of the FIGC, as Italy looks to the past in the search for future glory. The term “minestra riscaldata” or “warmed-up soup” is used in Italian football to unfavourably describe the choice to bring back a former coach or player. It was first coined in the mid-1990s, when both Arrigo Sacchi and Fabio Capello each suffered sorry second spells as coaches at Milan. Now fans and journalists alike must be fearing the same fate for Lippi. His decision to return to a team which he left in the most triumphant manner possible baffles me. The chances of Italy winning the next World Cup in South Africa are naturally slim, and failure to repeat the success of 2006 will, inevitably, forever tarnish Lippi’s carefully cultivated image as cigar-chomping world champion. But the 60 year-old claims he has turned down multiple offers from top clubs and national sides in the last two years, and is movitated by his so-called “debt to the federation” (a possible allusion to the effects of calciopoli on his original decision to quit).
Marcello Lippi puffs contently after leading Italy to World Cup glory in Berlin, 2006.
Lippi arrived at his first press conference as coach, fresh from the beach of his hometown of Viareggio, looking tanned and ready to “pick up where he left off.” He immediately played down talks of him trying to convince Francesco Totti and Alessandro Nesta out of international retirement (“We have to respect people’s decisions”) but said he would consider “all Italian players from 18 to 40. Even Cassano.”
One player who will not be thrilled to learn of Lippi’s return is Roma defender Christian Panucci. The pair feuded together at Inter in 1999, and Panucci was deliberately left out of all Lippi’s subsequent Italy squads. Panucci returned to the international fold under Donadoni, and at 35, became the second oldest goalscorer* in a European Championship, tapping in the equalizer (below) in Italy’s 1-1 draw with Romania at Euro 2008.
*Panucci would have been the oldest, had Austria’s Ivica Vastic, 38, not scored against Poland the previous day!
For Italy defender Christian Panucci, Azzurri joy was short-lived.
