Capitano Giorgio Chiellini (82 Viewers)
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once again, horncastle is a treasure, and so is giorgio too of course.
edit: full article below
Chiellini: Italy’s one-man barricade who turns defending into an art form
By James Horncastle Jul 3, 2021
The ball went up and came straight right back, not once, not twice but three times.
Up in the gantry at Munich’s Allianz Stadium, Fabio Caressa must have felt an exhilarating sense of deja-vu.
In Dortmund, 15 years ago, Sky Italia’s excitable lead commentator shouted “Cannavaro! CAN-NA-VARO! CAN-NA-VA-RO!” as the Italy captain headed away one Germany cross, then dashed out of his back four, won another header and started a counter-attack that culminated in Alessandro Del Piero’s unforgettable breakaway goal to make it 2-0 late in extra time. Fabio Cannavaro won the Ballon d’Or a few months later on the back of that display and will forever be known as the Berlin Wall for his heroics in that World Cup semi-final.
On Friday night, Caressa was at it again.
“Chiellini! CHI-EL-LINI! CHI-EL-LINI!” he cried as Italy’s skipper transformed into the rocks along the coastline of his hometown Livorno. Wave upon wave of Belgium attacks crashed against him and that sinking feeling consumed Roberto Martinez on the sideline. No one was getting past Chiellini.
Italy’s performance in this Euro 2020 quarter-final had everything. In the first half, we saw the Grande Bellezza — or Great Beauty — with Nicolo Barella and Lorenzo Insigne scoring a couple of goals that beggared belief for the balance and curl involved in both of them. Roberto Mancini’s counter-cultural team would have scored more than twice had Ciro Immobile not played his worst game for the Nazionale.
Belgium were limited to long balls up to Romelu Lukaku, quick counters and the jinking runs of an electric Jeremy Doku. The wastefulness in attack left the impression Italy might suffer after the interval, just as they had done in the previous round against Austria at Wembley. “If you want to call having 24 shots suffering, bring it on,” Mancini laughed in reflection on the extra-time win a week ago.
For the second time this tournament however, Gianluigi Donnarumma got to show why Paris Saint-Germain are prepared to pay him €12 million a year just to be Keylor Navas’ back-up as he made a huge save from Kevin De Bruyne. Alas, that intervention didn’t stop Giovanni Di Lorenzo from letting Belgium back into the game by tangling with Doku and giving away a penalty, which Lukaku converted, just before the break. The goal curbed blue enthusiasm and when the new high octane Italy grew tired, had to dig in, and lost Leonardo Spinazzola, one of the players of the tournament, to a heart-breaking injury, another knockout tie seemed to hang in the balance.
Manning the barricades — or better, forming a one-man barricade — Chiellini then came to the fore and showed that, but for the absence of a clinical striker, this Italy team is complete. A team who press high and play football as delightful and at times as exposed as Botticelli’s Birth of Venus are lucky to have someone at the back who, in a strictly mythological sense, appears to descend from Mars and never tires of going to war for his team.
Italy celebrate a clearance the way other sides might mark scoring a goal (Photo: Markus Gilliar/Getty Images)
On the eve of the game, the 36-year-old Chiellini said he would have no trouble sleeping that night. All the preparation he does puts his mind at rest. Chiellini watches clips of the striker he’s up against for 45 minutes. It’s a habit he started when Claudio Ranieri was his manager at Juventus.
“It helps me form a connection with them,” Chiellini explained. “I need to know what they like most, which runs they make. It’s my way of getting on their wavelength and syncing up with them. I watch every goal a team has scored that season, too. If we’re playing Barcelona, that means watching 80 or 90 of them, but you get an understanding of how they play from how they score and how you might be able to guess their intentions.”
Rather than take notes and record voice notes to prompt him, Chiellini tries to memorise everything he’s seen so he can take it on the pitch with him. “Great defenders have to have a database,” he writes in his book I, Giorgio — an instant recall of all they’ve seen from studying someone like Lukaku every bit as hard as he studied for his degree.
Homework completed, he logs out of Wyscout, shuts down his laptop and picks up a book — “For a few years now, I read to relax.” You’ll find thrillers and contemporary Italian fiction on Chiellini’s bedside table. He’s also finished Ken Follett’s Century Trilogy. “Video games and screen-time, texting and going online over-stimulate you and stop you from sleeping.”
Where Chiellini wants to be is in his opponent’s nightmares instead. He tries to get into their heads. “It’s a subtle psychological game, reading a striker’s mind,” he explained. “It’s the most important side to my game. We’re talking about moments, feelings. A top defender has to be almost clairvoyant.”
As Chiellini gets older, this is what keeps him one step ahead. “I’m not as explosive or as quick as in the past, but I am smarter. Playing one-against-one doesn’t matter to me, I’ve learned to move earlier, without allowing the attacker to do what he wants. I take him over to the side where there’s less space. I play offside. Prevention is better than the cure.”
Not that it’s prevented Chiellini from breaking his nose over and over again. He puts his body on the line and as much as Cannavaro used to tell him it’s his own fault he looks like a boxer, Chiellini wouldn’t have it any other way. “I tend to think a lot of the penalties these days come from players instinctively trying to protect their face.”
When De Bruyne fired a shot at goal from outside the box in the first half, who else but Chiellini was the one diving forward to head it away. He yells “Siamo pronti alla morte” — “We’re ready to die” — at the end of the national anthem and when Doku skipped past three of his team-mates and began winding up his right foot, who was the player sliding in ready to take a bullet for Italy? It was the Pisa-born veteran, the one who has lost count of all his scars.
“I’ve got a big collection on my head,” Chiellini said. “They must have given me at least 100 stitches. Blood doesn’t bother me, especially not my own. For me, defending is joy. Getting a decisive block in is pure joy. Those last-gasp tackles and unthinkable goal-line clearances give me so much more satisfaction than scoring a goal. Scoring’s nice, but it isn’t my life. Stopping one from going in is.”
You can see it in the way Chiellini celebrates shutting down a striker and killing a chance dead. Often he looks like Muhammad Ali stood over a knocked-out Sonny Liston in that iconic John Rooney photo shouting: “Get up and fight, sucker.”
“If you don’t concede, you demoralise your opponent,” Chiellini believes.
Chiellini celebrates Italy’s quarter-final win over Belgium in Munich (Photo: Andreas Gebert/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
It sends an emotional charge through his team too.
Chiellini chest bumped Donnarumma after making a stoppage-time block against Turkey in the opening game of the Euros and they repeated it against Belgium as Italy advanced to the semi-finals. Donnarumma even celebrated winning a goal-kick in the final seconds before the full-time whistle. “A defender is a goalkeeper’s best friend,” Chiellini claimed. “And a goalkeeper is the last bastion for a defender. We’re almost in harmony. The physical and mental proximity transmits energy.”
It’s worth remembering Chiellini wouldn’t have played in this tournament had it been held on schedule last summer. He was still recovering from an ACL tear that threatened to bring the curtain down on his career. On the eve of this tournament, some pundits looked at his age and pace and thought he might be a weak link in this Italy side. Social media called for Inter Milan wunderkind Alessandro Bastoni to play after helping winning last season’s Scudetto, which was also a slight on Francesco Acerbi, who deputised for Chiellini during his rehab and was the best centre-back in Serie A during the centurion’s absence last year.
The debate offered a reminder of the game’s fickleness, to say nothing of the lack of recognition Chiellini is due abroad and how skewed our analysis of centre-backs is towards build-up play and passing rather than defending. On Friday in Munich, Chiellini once again showed he is the best defender’s defender and his interpretation of his role is an art form.
“Destruction,” he likes to say, “is also a creative operation.”
By James Horncastle Jul 3, 2021
The ball went up and came straight right back, not once, not twice but three times.
Up in the gantry at Munich’s Allianz Stadium, Fabio Caressa must have felt an exhilarating sense of deja-vu.
In Dortmund, 15 years ago, Sky Italia’s excitable lead commentator shouted “Cannavaro! CAN-NA-VARO! CAN-NA-VA-RO!” as the Italy captain headed away one Germany cross, then dashed out of his back four, won another header and started a counter-attack that culminated in Alessandro Del Piero’s unforgettable breakaway goal to make it 2-0 late in extra time. Fabio Cannavaro won the Ballon d’Or a few months later on the back of that display and will forever be known as the Berlin Wall for his heroics in that World Cup semi-final.
On Friday night, Caressa was at it again.
“Chiellini! CHI-EL-LINI! CHI-EL-LINI!” he cried as Italy’s skipper transformed into the rocks along the coastline of his hometown Livorno. Wave upon wave of Belgium attacks crashed against him and that sinking feeling consumed Roberto Martinez on the sideline. No one was getting past Chiellini.
Italy’s performance in this Euro 2020 quarter-final had everything. In the first half, we saw the Grande Bellezza — or Great Beauty — with Nicolo Barella and Lorenzo Insigne scoring a couple of goals that beggared belief for the balance and curl involved in both of them. Roberto Mancini’s counter-cultural team would have scored more than twice had Ciro Immobile not played his worst game for the Nazionale.
Belgium were limited to long balls up to Romelu Lukaku, quick counters and the jinking runs of an electric Jeremy Doku. The wastefulness in attack left the impression Italy might suffer after the interval, just as they had done in the previous round against Austria at Wembley. “If you want to call having 24 shots suffering, bring it on,” Mancini laughed in reflection on the extra-time win a week ago.
For the second time this tournament however, Gianluigi Donnarumma got to show why Paris Saint-Germain are prepared to pay him €12 million a year just to be Keylor Navas’ back-up as he made a huge save from Kevin De Bruyne. Alas, that intervention didn’t stop Giovanni Di Lorenzo from letting Belgium back into the game by tangling with Doku and giving away a penalty, which Lukaku converted, just before the break. The goal curbed blue enthusiasm and when the new high octane Italy grew tired, had to dig in, and lost Leonardo Spinazzola, one of the players of the tournament, to a heart-breaking injury, another knockout tie seemed to hang in the balance.
Manning the barricades — or better, forming a one-man barricade — Chiellini then came to the fore and showed that, but for the absence of a clinical striker, this Italy team is complete. A team who press high and play football as delightful and at times as exposed as Botticelli’s Birth of Venus are lucky to have someone at the back who, in a strictly mythological sense, appears to descend from Mars and never tires of going to war for his team.
Italy celebrate a clearance the way other sides might mark scoring a goal (Photo: Markus Gilliar/Getty Images)
On the eve of the game, the 36-year-old Chiellini said he would have no trouble sleeping that night. All the preparation he does puts his mind at rest. Chiellini watches clips of the striker he’s up against for 45 minutes. It’s a habit he started when Claudio Ranieri was his manager at Juventus.
“It helps me form a connection with them,” Chiellini explained. “I need to know what they like most, which runs they make. It’s my way of getting on their wavelength and syncing up with them. I watch every goal a team has scored that season, too. If we’re playing Barcelona, that means watching 80 or 90 of them, but you get an understanding of how they play from how they score and how you might be able to guess their intentions.”
Rather than take notes and record voice notes to prompt him, Chiellini tries to memorise everything he’s seen so he can take it on the pitch with him. “Great defenders have to have a database,” he writes in his book I, Giorgio — an instant recall of all they’ve seen from studying someone like Lukaku every bit as hard as he studied for his degree.
Homework completed, he logs out of Wyscout, shuts down his laptop and picks up a book — “For a few years now, I read to relax.” You’ll find thrillers and contemporary Italian fiction on Chiellini’s bedside table. He’s also finished Ken Follett’s Century Trilogy. “Video games and screen-time, texting and going online over-stimulate you and stop you from sleeping.”
Where Chiellini wants to be is in his opponent’s nightmares instead. He tries to get into their heads. “It’s a subtle psychological game, reading a striker’s mind,” he explained. “It’s the most important side to my game. We’re talking about moments, feelings. A top defender has to be almost clairvoyant.”
As Chiellini gets older, this is what keeps him one step ahead. “I’m not as explosive or as quick as in the past, but I am smarter. Playing one-against-one doesn’t matter to me, I’ve learned to move earlier, without allowing the attacker to do what he wants. I take him over to the side where there’s less space. I play offside. Prevention is better than the cure.”
Not that it’s prevented Chiellini from breaking his nose over and over again. He puts his body on the line and as much as Cannavaro used to tell him it’s his own fault he looks like a boxer, Chiellini wouldn’t have it any other way. “I tend to think a lot of the penalties these days come from players instinctively trying to protect their face.”
When De Bruyne fired a shot at goal from outside the box in the first half, who else but Chiellini was the one diving forward to head it away. He yells “Siamo pronti alla morte” — “We’re ready to die” — at the end of the national anthem and when Doku skipped past three of his team-mates and began winding up his right foot, who was the player sliding in ready to take a bullet for Italy? It was the Pisa-born veteran, the one who has lost count of all his scars.
“I’ve got a big collection on my head,” Chiellini said. “They must have given me at least 100 stitches. Blood doesn’t bother me, especially not my own. For me, defending is joy. Getting a decisive block in is pure joy. Those last-gasp tackles and unthinkable goal-line clearances give me so much more satisfaction than scoring a goal. Scoring’s nice, but it isn’t my life. Stopping one from going in is.”
You can see it in the way Chiellini celebrates shutting down a striker and killing a chance dead. Often he looks like Muhammad Ali stood over a knocked-out Sonny Liston in that iconic John Rooney photo shouting: “Get up and fight, sucker.”
“If you don’t concede, you demoralise your opponent,” Chiellini believes.
Chiellini celebrates Italy’s quarter-final win over Belgium in Munich (Photo: Andreas Gebert/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
It sends an emotional charge through his team too.
Chiellini chest bumped Donnarumma after making a stoppage-time block against Turkey in the opening game of the Euros and they repeated it against Belgium as Italy advanced to the semi-finals. Donnarumma even celebrated winning a goal-kick in the final seconds before the full-time whistle. “A defender is a goalkeeper’s best friend,” Chiellini claimed. “And a goalkeeper is the last bastion for a defender. We’re almost in harmony. The physical and mental proximity transmits energy.”
It’s worth remembering Chiellini wouldn’t have played in this tournament had it been held on schedule last summer. He was still recovering from an ACL tear that threatened to bring the curtain down on his career. On the eve of this tournament, some pundits looked at his age and pace and thought he might be a weak link in this Italy side. Social media called for Inter Milan wunderkind Alessandro Bastoni to play after helping winning last season’s Scudetto, which was also a slight on Francesco Acerbi, who deputised for Chiellini during his rehab and was the best centre-back in Serie A during the centurion’s absence last year.
The debate offered a reminder of the game’s fickleness, to say nothing of the lack of recognition Chiellini is due abroad and how skewed our analysis of centre-backs is towards build-up play and passing rather than defending. On Friday in Munich, Chiellini once again showed he is the best defender’s defender and his interpretation of his role is an art form.
“Destruction,” he likes to say, “is also a creative operation.”
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It will be great to see Chiellini (and even Bonucci) finally lift an international trophy. It would not have felt to have seen them end their careers with such success on the domestic front, but nothing aside from terrible moments when it mattered most in international football.
Winning the Euros as captain would be a perfect ending to his legendary career, but I think he has some more to give to both Juventus and potentially Italy at the World Cup. However, his minutes and training have to be managed intelligently.
Winning the Euros as captain would be a perfect ending to his legendary career, but I think he has some more to give to both Juventus and potentially Italy at the World Cup. However, his minutes and training have to be managed intelligently.
And then we complain about the squad age, depth 
you remember ... when we lost to Ajax ... depending on Leo alone with absence of Gorgio ...
Gorgio soon to retire
Leo at his last years and he is not consistent
Defenders are expensive to get ...
really it is the opposite of what you saying.
Demiral just need to kick start well and we good to go ...
Keep Rugani then
you remember ... when we lost to Ajax ... depending on Leo alone with absence of Gorgio ...
Gorgio soon to retire
Leo at his last years and he is not consistent
Defenders are expensive to get ...
really it is the opposite of what you saying.
Demiral just need to kick start well and we good to go ...
Keep Rugani then
Lolz at brilliant idea of not extending him at club on what basis? Who do we got that's on par for cover you trolls? Who do the NT have for this level? It's not just about someone that can play equally well and make the movements, but who's going to lead that line rugani? Dollaruma? Sit back you clowns bar any injury Giorgios got this.
You got MDL and Bono as starters. Yes get a youngster but still important to have a vet like Chiell on/off the pitch. Danilo can play CB but honestly having Cuads on the right I rather see Danilo play LB at times with getting another youngster as backup.
Send on/off Sandro on his way. Can't believe no one wants one of the best RBs in the world. LOL. Pretty much sums up Juve quality of team as a whole when few players are wanted by other teams.
Send on/off Sandro on his way. Can't believe no one wants one of the best RBs in the world. LOL. Pretty much sums up Juve quality of team as a whole when few players are wanted by other teams.
Lolz at brilliant idea of not extending him at club on what basis? Who do we got that's on par for cover you trolls? Who do the NT have for this level? It's not just about someone that can play equally well and make the movements, but who's going to lead that line rugani? Dollaruma? Sit back you clowns bar any injury Giorgios got this.
Anytime during the next season.
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Because others can't get 5 freaking games in a row together ffs: Chiellini is a starter, starts 3 games, gets injured, comes back starts again, gets injured again, rinse repeat.
When the fuck are others supposed to get consistency/stability?
Yes he is still our best CB perhaps but we need to move past him, learn to play without him because, again, he WILL be sidelined when we need most.
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Because others can't get 5 freaking games in a row together ffs: Chiellini is a starter, starts 3 games, gets injured, comes back starts again, gets injured again, rinse repeat.
When the fuck are others supposed to get consistency/stability?
Yes he is still our best CB perhaps but we need to move past him, learn to play without him because, again, he WILL be sidelined when we need most.