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Player Profile: Fabio Cannavaro
Authority, Tenacity, Surely You Might Be Talking About Fabio Cannavaro...
The tales that the children hear will always be of vanquishers, who attack their rivals and make their mark with their triumphs. The ones who valiantly defend their fort are always forgotten. The goal scorers get into the record books for their number of goals. The creativity of the midfielders is also praised. The goalkeepers have their own uniqueness to be remembered too. There is a group which is most times forgotten, the defenders.
A person who is over-curious, and wants to know more than he ought, always carries the match in his hand to set fire to the powder-room of his own fortunes; and he who pries into others’ affairs is frequently a loser in his own; for generally he who digs holes to search for treasures, comes to a ditch into which he himself falls, as happened to the daughter of a gardener, Parmetella, the heroine of an old Italian tale. Giambattista Basile, the author of that stor, was a Neapolitan.
Mostly people from Naples never peep into others’ affairs. They have a household to look after, and they are satisfied with protecting their kin. Another Neapolitan, who left the place for Parma, then shifted to Milan, and finally came to Turin, took his horde to Germany just to defend his area. He never become over-curious and he will not dig any holes to search for treasures, but he goes searching for one fortune that has left his country for twenty-four years. His job is defending his fort, and there are not many other people who do that better than him. He is Fabio Cannavaro, captain of the Italian national team, and arguably world’s best central defender at present.
In the era of harsh tackling and play-acting defenders, Cannavaro’s art of defending is rather pure. It is rare to see a spectacular, last-ditch, sliding tackle from him because he hardly ever finds himself needing to take desperate measures. When you first see Fabio on the field, it is difficult to identify him as a defender. Just 5ft 9in tall (or short), he doesn’t possess the height to be a top marksman. To compensate, he has built up his upper body and arms. The only thing that gives you a hint is his broad chest which never drops. But he is quick, strong, intelligent and very rarely does he make a mistake.
From an early age he refined an Italian aspiration: he wanted to be a defender. Cannavaro has a faint contempt for attackers, they can mess around with the ball, even lose it. Cannavaro found a role model in another Neapolitan defender, Ciro Ferrara, who is 33 and sits on Italy's bench. “He was and is my example,” says Cannavaro. He is in that long line of Italian defenders, encompassing legends like Oriali, Bergomi, Collovati and the filthy Claudio Gentile to contemporaries Franco Baresi, Paolo Maldini and Alessandro Nesta. The one he can be compared to is Gaetano Scirea, who was a graceful defender of great skill and tactical ability.
In contrast to the ruthless tactics often employed by defenders, Scirea was renowned for his fair play and sportsmanship. All these thoughts that defending is the greatest fine art. They would sing in the shower if they shut a striker out of the match, even if their team had lost.
“The way the Italians do it, defending is indeed glorious, the most important thing in football,” says Cannavaro, “and it is beautiful as well”.
In the days of blood, sweat and sniffles, and the pile-up of crunching tackles, beauty exists within their game of football. It may not always be apparent throughout the course of a match, but it is there, sparkling underneath the surface.
In art, as in nature, balance and synchronized performance are seen as being possessed of beauty, of all things, an offside trap can be beautiful. Defending can be a lot of things: grainy, hideous, frantic, and crucial. But it is attractive in precision. That is what Cannavaro practices, he is much a perfectionist. In a dance, you can practice and perform. That is not the case with football. There match situations become totally different from that on a training ground. There you need improvising, and in inventing in synch is when it becomes an art-form.
Defenders are, on average, mentally much stronger than strikers. A striker can rely on a couple of good moments during a match, while a defender has to be alert for the whole 90 minutes. He cannot afford to lose his concentration a single second, or he will be beaten by an expert striker. Strikers can make a lot of slip-ups and still win the game, and that is the way they mostly play. A defender can play a fantastic match, and still lose it by making one little mistake, and that takes a lot more mental toughness. And the good ones show it.
Cannavaro is one such, a crafty defender who is seemingly flawless in one-on-one situations. A precise tackler with good aerial ability, despite his lack of height, can also play well the ball at his feet and often starts quick counter-attacking plays. At most of those occasions, he clears the ball quickly. But the ball will end up only at the feet of his team-mates. He has been playing for the Azzurri seemingly forever and will go down in history as one of the best defenders in the history of the Italian National team.
Cannavaro and the rest of Italy's defense have allowed only one goal in six games, and that was Zaccardo's own-goal in a 1-1 draw with the United States in the first round. Italy’s skipper and the most capped player among the current squad, Fabio Cannavaro is a stalwart of the 'Azzurri’ side. He will be entering the century of caps, and what better an occasion to achieve it, the World Cup final. His performances, against Australia when they lost Materazzi, and then again in the semi-final with Germany, have been simply superb.
Together with goalkeeper Buffon, the friendship he had from their Parma days, which still continues now with Juventus, Cannavaro is the one who is responsible for the solidity of Italy. What he lacks in height, he makes up for with great anticipation, aggression and power. Now only one more step to glory, as in Marcelo Lippi’s own words, “to complete the opera”. Berlin waits, for the master of defense to deliver, and if he does, he can go down in history books as the one valiant who protected his kingdom, and never gave up.