FRANCE 98 – Match preview n°20
Roberto Baggio and Alessandro Del Piero face a crash course in lion-taming here on Wednesday night when Italy venture out against Cameroon.
With one point earned from their 2-2 draw against Chile, Italy know that a win over Africa’s ” Indomitable Lions ” could help them going into the second round. Italy, as finalists of USA 94, will start out as favourites. But coach Cesare Maldini has problems to solve in all three departments if his men are to bring Cameroon to heel. First, the 66-year-old has to tighten up a defence which is skilful and well-organised but prone to the odd blackout. The mistakes and slack marking which allowed Marcelo Salas to score twice in Bordeaux cannot be repeated.
The midfield meanwhile has to provide a lot more punch, and a lot more support to the men up front, who were too often left isolated against Chile. Heads are certain to roll in Montpellier, with Maldini’s guillotine falling on Chelsea’s Roberto Di Matteo, to be replaced by the more aggressive Luigi Di Biagio, and on Angelo Di Livio, who would make way for the more creative dribbling of Inter Milan right winger Francesco Moriero.
However, the biggest headache is what to do about the attack, and which inevitably becomes tangled up with his midfield selection. Fifty million Italians want to see Baggio and Del Piero play together with target-man Christian Vieri in a three-man attack. But the one Italian who takes the decision is not sure.
Maldini has been experimenting in training with a 4-3-3 formation, where there is no room for Moriero, and the results have been encouraging. However, he may well decide it is just too risky to leave only three men to fight the battle for midfield. Udinese finished third in the Serie A with a three-man attack but it took coach Alberto Zaccheroni two years to get it right. Maldini has been working on the problem since Sunday.
And the only precedent, when he was under even more pressure to win, saw the combined efforts of Gianfranco Zola, Vieri and Filippo Inzaghi make no impression on England in their final qualifier in Rome. And while it’s true that Baggio and Del Piero were together from 1993-95 at Juventus, they only started a league match together six times in two years. Mostly, it was one or the other, with Del Piero as Baggio’s understudy. For Wednesday’s game, the smart money is on Baggio playing the first hour and then being substituted for Del Piero, who admitted that he probably wouldn’t last 90 minutes anyway.
Whatever the formation, the one certainty is that Cameroon will not go down without flailing a few claws at Maldini’s men.
The Indomitable Lions held out for a 1-1 draw in the group phase when Italy won the World Cup in 1982, and they frightened the life out of England before succumbing 3-2 in the quarter-finals of Italia 90.Now they are back for another World Cup adventure with a team which is almost entirely based on players from European clubs, with gifted striker Patrick Mboma about to leave Japan for Serie A club Cagliari.
Their new coach, Frenchman Claude Le Roy, summed up the mood in the lions’ den, saying: ” I respect Italy, but I don’t fear them. “ The fear is more with Italy, who are dangerous in the sudden death matches of the later rounds, but much less so at the group stage.
At USA 94, they finished third in their group and were the worst of the four lucky losers who made it to the second round.At Euro 96, they didn’t even get that far, being knocked out by eventual finalists Germany and the Czech Republic. And on the road to France 98, Italy beat England at Wembley and didn’t lose a single game but still failed to qualify for an automatic place, suffering instead the humiliation of the play-offs.
So if they are to end that run against Cameroon, Baggio and his fellow showmen will clearly have to crack the whip on Wednesday night.