Carlo Garganese's Calcio Debate: Italian Teams Like Juventus & Roma Are Wrongly Focusing On Sub-Standard 'Team' Players Ahead Of Talented 'Individuals'
Goal.com's Carlo Garganese explains that you require a mix of team spirit and individual flair to succeed, not just the former...
By Carlo Garganese
Jan 12, 2011 3:00:00 PM
“The group is more important than the individual.”
If I received a Euro every time an Italian coach, or any footballing figure in general, had said the above during the course of the last year I would now be a millionaire.
And I would boast a fortune the equal of Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour if I collected a pound every time this philosophy was taken too far.
Team spirit, harmony, mental fortitude, resilience, determination, and many other group related attributes are vital for the success of any team. This has been demonstrated numerous times throughout history. Why do Germany almost always reach at least the last eight or four of the World Cup – even when possessing weak squads on paper? How did Greece triumph at Euro 2004? Why are Jose Mourinho’s sides always so successful? It is thanks to the ‘group’.
However, with very few exceptions (Greece 2004) success is tremendously difficult to achieve, and almost impossible to maintain (Greece 2004), without individual class and quality too.
Italy’s 2006 World Cup winners were lauded for their team spirit, but they also boasted a horde of individuals such as Francesco Totti, Andrea Pirlo and Alessandro Del Piero. Inter’s 2010 Champions League conquerors ran through brick walls together for their coach Mourinho, but in addition they contained world class game-changers like Wesley Sneijder and Samuel Eto’o.
Over the past few seasons, too many high-profile Italian teams and coaches have overlooked just how important Totti-type individuals are and placed too much emphasis on the ‘group’ – with disastrous consequences.
The best example, of course, was Marcello Lippi’s second spell in charge of the Italy national team that ended in a humiliating first round exit at the 2010 World Cup after obtaining just two points from a pool consisting of Paraguay, Slovakia and rank outsiders New Zealand. Lippi fed us the same old nonsense for two painful years about how only players who embraced the team ethic would be considered. As a result, Italy’s three best forwards – Antonio Cassano, Mario Balotelli and Totti – were all left at home.
Post-Calciopoli Juventus – the Diego deal aside - have generally been guilty of regularly buying sub-standard ‘team’ players such as Christian Poulsen, Amauri and Luca Toni instead of flamboyant individuals. The decision to pass up the opportunity to sign Antonio Cassano on a free transfer because “he doesn’t fit into the team plans” was a moment of utter madness on behalf of the Juventus management and has all but ended their hopes of the Scudetto this season. Fabio Quagliarella’s season-curtailing injury means that even a top-four finish is by no means guaranteed.
Everyone’s favourite runner-up Claudio Ranieri has always been associated with pragmatism, and having now stamped his print on the Giallorossi he is doing his best to vanish all the magic from Magica Roma. Francesco Totti – the club’s greatest ever hero – has been all but ruined by the signing of ‘team’ player Marco Borriello. The ex-Milan striker has done well statistically (9 goals in 18 league games), but have the team? Roma are well off the pace in Serie A, and even more worryingly the arrival of Borriello has seemingly brought the worst out of skilful individuals such as Totti, Mirko Vucinic and the peninsula’s best midfielder last term David Pizarro (the closest thing to Xavi in Europe), who has lost his place in the starting XI to average ‘team’ player Leandro Greco.
It is true that this is a poor era of football, perhaps the weakest for 50 years, and the volume of top-class individuals worth granting extra privileges to are fewer than in past generations. It is also true that the ‘evolution’ of football, which has become faster and more athletic – mainly due to disgraceful plastic balls – has pushed many playmakers, trequartistas and skilful schemers out of the game.
Nevertheless, as the only truly legendary team of the last four years – Barcelona – have proven, there is no substitute for individual brilliance when it is packaged into a team system. It is time that Italy’s guilty leaders such as Ranieri, Lippi, Luigi Del Neri and Giuseppe Marotta recognize that you require a mix of ‘individual’ + ‘team’ in order to produce a winning formula.
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