Italy, The Controversies

South Korea/Japan 2002

At the first-ever World Cup held in Asia in 2002, Italy approached it as one of the favourites to win it. The squad had players that were household names and in their prime like Gianluigi Buffon, Fabio Cannavaro, Alessandro Nesta, Francesco Totti, Christian Vieri and Alessandro Del Piero. Add to that the leadership, experience and class of captain, Paolo Maldini. One classy veteran to miss out was Roberto Baggio who raced against time to recover from an Anterior Cruciate Ligament and meniscus injury to try and play himself into contention. Giovanni Trapattoni decided to go against public opinion to call him up.

The controversy for Italy started in the second group stage game itself against Croatia. We were denied a legitimate goal by the offside flag before Vieri scored. Had that goal been allowed, we would have been 2-0 up and in a far more comfortable situation. Poor defending and some luck allowed our bogey team to overturn the result. Luck was not on our side when Totti’s free-kick hit the inside of the post and stayed out before a long ball by Marco Materazzi bounced into the opposing goal but disqualified for a jersey pull by Filippo Inzaghi.

That defeat threatened to compromise our qualification and we were nearly knocked out if not for Del Piero’s equaliser against Mexico in the final group stage match. That brought us to the infamous Second Round match against co-hosts, South Korea. As far as controversies go, Totti’s sending off was harsh. We should have got a penalty for a foul on him in the box instead he got a second yellow card for play-acting and was sent off. Besides that, like in the Croatia game, there was a wrong offside call. Damiano Tommasi was onside when he was played through but the call was made too soon.

Looking at it objectively, controversy aside, Vieri was unusually profligate. He missed two good chances to extend our lead. South Korea played at a high intensity and was aggressive. They had the backing of the partisan home crowd and we needed a stronger, experienced referee to officiate. We got a dubious character instead. Our egos were hurt by the exit but bad luck played it’s hand too.

Euro 2004

At Euro 2004, it was the same squad with the addition of Andrea Pirlo and Antonio Cassano. We could put the experiences of South Korea/Japan 2002 down to bad luck. But we messed up in the first game here, drawing 0-0 to Denmark with the further ignominy of Totti getting banned retrospectively for spitting at his opponent. That result gave the game against Sweden added importance and for all the chances we had, we could only score once before Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s dramatic late acrobatic equaliser.

That left us needing a favour from either Denmark or Sweden who would play each other. Either team winning would work for us. A draw less than 2-2 would work too. Instead, our worst fears were realised when the Scandinavian teams got that exact result to knock us out. One can be suspicious at that result and Italian football is always too keen to play up conspiracy theories to allay the failings of the team. I felt that we only got ourselves to blame for our elimination this time.