Did Italy play their own football to win the World Cup in Germany?
We played a traditionally strong Italian game, we demonstrated a football style that was not just about defence but also more modern, in keeping with how the majority of teams now play in Italy. People who think Italian football is just about defence are either ill-informed or dishonest. You cannot analyse Italian football as if it were the Fifties or Sixties. There are plenty of Italian teams now that are attack-minded. Nobody opts just to defend and hoof the ball upfield. There’s no country in the world with a better standard of coaching. At every level, Italian coaches are very good technically, tactically, athletically and that’s because lower-level football in Italy is very, very competitive, much more so than in lots of other countries. Has Italian football’s credibility suffered because of last summer’s Calciopoli match-fixing scandal? No. Around the world, people see Italy as the world champions. As for corruption, other countries such as Portugal and Germany have had their pro
