Dear Giorgio Chiellini
Andrea Tallarita for Football Italia
Dear Giorgio Chiellini, you must be familiar with an old Italian football motto that commands, alas, very little respect overseas: Primo non prenderne. It means 'first of all, you mustn't concede a goal'. It means that everything else in a football game is consequence and footnotes. The saying turns noses up outside of Italy because – as anyone who's ever kicked a ball around can testify – the natural fantasy is that of scoring goals. 'First of all, you must score'. Defence doesn't break transfer records, it seldom wins Ballon d'Or awards, and it doesn't make it onto the covers of Playstation games. Concisely, defence doesn't sell.
But there is a history to that saying, and when you're Italian, you know this very well. It doesn't mean that defence is the only thing in football, rather that it is the first thing, the foundation. Defence is the skeleton of a football team; everything else is built on top of that.
Now the thing about skeletons, whether we're discussing a human body, a team, or just a tent, is that they are all about structure. And that's not something you build overnight. It takes trial and error, an intelligence capable of rebuilding the parts that break, and lots of faith in the people involved. Sit with any football Coach and they will tell you as much, no matter where they're from: structure takes time, and therefore defence takes time.
This, dear Giorgio, is what Antonio Conte was never given. And this is the reason we're writing this letter. Even if your former Coach hadn't been denied his training camps, even if the Lega Serie A had actually bowed to his requests instead of tossing them all back in his face, he still wouldn't have been able to optimise the Azzurri's defensive potential.
So what Conte needs – what Italy needs, Giorgio – is for the Juventus back-line to be grafted onto the formation of the Azzurri. This was how they won in 2006: Gianluigi Buffon, Fabio Cannavaro, and Gianluca Zambrotta, importing their collective intelligence from the white and black to the distilled blue. This is how you must do it now.
Buffon is still with you, but he's a goalkeeper, and so less of a warrior than a remote sentinel. Daniele Rugani is too green, of course. Andrea Barzagli is too grey. Leonardo Bonucci is good – brilliant, even – but he's not like you. He's a cossack, a bulldog, a ronin. In many ways he's the more entertaining player. You're good because you're skilled, Giorgio, while he's good because he's nasty. Not terribly so (not nearly like, say, ol' Materazzi). Just enough to give him an edge.
But he's not a knight. Bonucci can be callous or inappropriate, in person and on social media. He may have a touch of base vulgarity, or a shady side; it was his name, and not yours, that was linked to the betting scandal in 2012.
We need you to speak for the team, Giorgio. We need you to bring to pass what Conte cannot conjure and what Bonucci cannot replicate: we need you to marshal your fellow Juventini, and whoever else makes up the defence, into a perfect form. You must be the bird that flies at the head of the V.
We need you, also, because you can play in the middle and on the flank, like the great Paolo Maldini before you. This is not a comparison (and you wouldn't like the outcome), but make no mistake about it, we need you no less than we once needed him. Italy's general defensive depth, if we consider the full-backs, is questionable. Several of the names are inexperienced or simply not good enough. The golden and the silver ages of Italian defenders are a thing of the past, which is why a centre-back who can cover more than just that role is a national treasure.
We don't know if you feel like a real Azzurro. In truth, we could not blame you if you didn't: the blue on that old shirt looks faded, and the odds of your team are so low. The Italy that you know is not the Italy that we knew: ours wouldn't have put up an embarrassing show at three international tournaments in the space of six years (2008-14). Above all, our Azzurri would never have shown such a pitiful lack of backbone.
And there's the point, of course, which must now be clear to you. If defence really is the skeleton of a team, then you are – you have to be – its backbone. In every possible sense of the phrase. We have other defenders and we have other leaders, but nobody can cover that particular role the way you can.
You are almost 32, Giorgio, and you are playing alongside Bonucci in what may be the most solid and experienced couple of centre-backs Italy will have this whole decade. There's only so much gas left in the tank and you know what to do. We need you to teach the snobs and the cynics what primo non prenderne means. We need backbone. We need you.
![Juventino[RUS]](https://www.juventuz.com/data/avatars/m/5/5409.jpg?1650619365){kind=avatar}
![Juventino[RUS]](https://www.juventuz.com/data/avatars/s/5/5409.jpg?1650619365){kind=avatar}
Such an undeserving shitcunt. What a pathetic looking team; the weakest Azzurri in living memory.
