Newsgroup: it.sport.calcio.milan
Titolo: [ENG e MOLTO LUNGO] DEl gioco del Milan e della finale vista dall'estero

 Dal 1998 sono abbonata a una mailing list internazionale di fan del
Borussia Dortmund. Negli ultimi giorni a tenere banco sono state le
questioni circa la finalissima e sulla bruttezza del calcio italiano. Avendo
chiesto il permesso vi propongo, se ne avete voglia, il post di David con
una breve introduzione:
Keith, americano, interviene chiedendo, visto che non ha ancora visto la
finale, se č stata davvero tanto brutta come la dipingono gli altri membri
della lista. Io replico che se devono proprio blaterare cosě, non la
guardino, e che devo esser eproprio una idiota di italiana per poter
apprezzare un gioco tanto insulso. David risponde come segue. A me č
piaciuto molto.... Buona lettura:
Maria, you're not a silly Italian. OK, maybe you are, but not because you
thought it was a good match last night!!
Keith - check your mail Saturday. If I did the postage right you can relax
in the evening and decide for yourself.
Both teams attacked last night. It was not a cynical match in the way that
Bayscum were cynical in much of league play 2001-2002 - Effenberg passing
the ball aimlessly around midfield, supposedly waiting for something to open
up. This game simply featured two great defenses. There were more long balls
than usual between Italian sides, mainly because midfielders and forwards
were so tightly marked. Would it make it a better game if the defenders
simply decided not to mark everyone? Are they supposed to slack off on
defense, the thing they do better than anyone in the world, simply to
entertain us?
If people simply don't enjoy Serie A then that's fine. No need for everyone
to love it. But just because it doesn't catch someone's fancy doesn't mean
it's stale, staid, boring, cynical, etc. They simply take all aspects of the
game seriously. Name a defender in England, Spain or Germany who could start
in the back four for either Juventus or AC Milan. I'm sure there are some
candidates but I don't imagine Ancellotti or Lippi would agree.
I don't think these two teams were afraid to risk anything. There simply
wasn't much open space. Yes there were probably over 50 fouls in the match,
but mostly those are products of intelligent defending. Late in the game I
believe it was Tacchinardi brought down someone who had just crossed the
halfway line. I think he received a yellow for his efforts. But the beauty
of the play was that he realized Juve had lost the ball while attacking
which left Zambrotta way upfield unable to help on defense. Tacchinardi saw
that Roque Junior (Serginho?) was open running down the right with no one
marking him. So Tacchinardi took down the man with the ball before the play
developed. Very smart. But you had to rewind and see it again before you
realized why he decided to foul. At first it looks like a stupid, needless
foul. But it was not. Maybe not too pretty, but smart. I find that kind of
tactical interchange enthralling, especially when it means that any goals
you do get will likely be the result of a brilliant exchange of passes or a
brilliant piece of skill to unlock a defense.
I don't think anyone has said anything about Serie A now ruling the world of
football. They won the Champions League. It's a tournament. When you hold a
tournament you get a tournament champion. That's it. The rest is sour grapes
from teams who do not take seriously all aspects of the game. It takes a
diferent kind of tactical preparation to win knockout matches or home and
away matches than to win a league. I think anyone who watches Serie A
regularly along with watching other leagues regularly, will tell you that
you will see more spectacular goals in Serie A because defenses are so tight
that you must produce something extraordinary to score. In between the goals
you get a chess match. The Italians use their brains. Which leads me to this
story, which states more eloquently how I feel:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,762-696001,00.html
May 29, 2003
Italians put brains before beauty
By Simon Barnes at Old Trafford
FOOTBALL is an Italian game that just happens to have been invented in
England. That was the only conclusion to draw from the European Cup final
last night, a match played with the rhythm of a rapier duel and the passion
of a chess world championship. We had a final between two Italian teams, AC
Milan and Juventus, and they showed us why they were there and why there was
no Spanish or English team. Milan won on penalties, but the point to the
evening, so far as the rest of Europe is concerned, is that the Italians
are, once again, the capo di tutti capi.
Perhaps three nations have made the most significant contributions to
football thus far in its history. From the British, passion. From the
Brazilians, beauty. And from the Italians, intelligence. In Italian
football, a head is not just something you use to attack a long ball with or
to crack an opponent on the bridge of the nose. It has other, less familiar
uses.
And that was the most compelling aspect of this final: the constant wit, the
constant thought, the constant application of things that had been thought
out on earlier occasions. It is not that the match lacked passion or beauty
or, for that matter, that English football lacks brains and beauty. It is a
matter of emphasis.
English football people have frequently used the sophisticated football of
the Italians as a stick with which to belabour themselves, mostly unaware
that the same tradition exists in other countries who hold up English
football as an example of commitment and passion so sadly lacking in their
own denatured game. The Italians, we have heard and read so many times, have
everything we don't. Just like people who read Elizabeth David cookery books
and sigh about the way the French are so much more civilised than us. Such
self- flagellation is surely long out of date, with the mad multiculturalism
of the Premiership and the consistent success - for despite the single
triumph, it must be seen as that - of Manchester United in the Champions
League.
We are no longer flabbergasted when a centre back controls a high, fast ball
with a single touch. We are no longer astounded when a midfield player lays
a first-time pass precisely to its target. But, all the same, the emphasis
is unchanged. Despite the babel of tongues and the United Nations
atmosphere, the dominant feature of English football is passion, just as
this match was always going to be dominated by its own distinct brand of
passionate thoughtfulness.
Intelligence can be a vice, just as much as passion or beauty. Intelligent
football can be just as self- destructive as the other kinds. Italian
football can retreat into a kind of orgy of caution, a self- indulgent
celebration of clever negativity that gets both sides nowhere. The worst of
Italian football is a kind of conspiracy theory on legs. Italian sides like
to play to a plan and, glory be, both sides went to Old Trafford last night
with the intention of scoring a goal.
That's where this rapier rhythm came in. It is unfamiliar to us, no matter
how many foreigners, including Italians, we watch during the Premiership
season. English football just doesn't have that stop- start rhythm, that
momentary pause for cogitation and assessment, like the tippety-tap of the
two blades, followed by the attack. And as with the rapier duellist, the
Italian footballer knows that if you overcommit, then the riposte will be
unstoppable. And so these sides felt each other out with the first
thoughtful exchanges and each thrillingly came to the conclusion that the
opposition could be beaten if only the attack - if only the riposte - was
perfect. It became a matter of two highly skilled and intelligent sides,
each in search of an instant of perfection.
It was Milan who first found the moment of perfection, but their ace was
trumped, Clarence Seedorf's cross met by a perfect flying header from
Filippo Inzaghi - football as perfect as you could wish. But Gianluigi
Buffon took a half-step beyond perfection with his save. Sometimes, as a
lapsed goalkeeper, I find a goal anticlimactic, inconclusive: the perfect
sequence has failed to occur because the goalkeeper was beaten. This time,
cross, header and save - a triple excellence, as good a bit of football as
you will see.
The first 90 minutes gave us one of the best 0-0 draws you could hope to
see. It was not goalless for reasons of timidity, still less from the
clichéd notion of the sterility of Italian football. It was just the way
things worked out.
Panic began to ease into the match as it continued goalless, but Italian
sides even panic with style. It was time, perhaps, to go slumming in search
of a spot of beauty or passion. But extra time brought weariness and with
it, a sense of resignation. Both sides lost the will for risk and preferred
the dignity of defeat on penalties to the desperate disappointment of
conceding a goal in open play.
The Italian clubs have not dominated the Champions League throughout - Juve
lost 3-0 to United in Turin, for example - but they have won the endgame.
This is a term borrowed from chess, and not accidentally. Real Madrid,
deputising for Brazil, showed us how far beauty will get you, and United
showed the limits of passion.
Three Italian sides made the last four and the two that were left showed us
why. We often talk about a player who has "an educated left foot" - always a
left one for some reason. This was a match played by footballers with
educated brains. "You want to remove my brain?" Woody Allen said in Sleeper.
"It's my second favourite organ!" The Italians showed us last night that it
is their favourite. Purely in the footballing sense, of course.
--
Lady of the Rings
Tessera #1: "Un sopracciglio alzato con orgoglio"
Tessera #0 "Pippo rossonero a vita, e scusate il ritardo"
L'interista vero ti corregge se sbagli i congiuntivi anche se lui
conosce solo il passato remoto.


Questo non e' giornalismo sportivo, e' poesia.
-- 
Samuele Ruggieri
Associate Expert
Expert Zone - 
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone

 Questo non e' giornalismo sportivo, e' poesia.
Beh, a me piaceva più quello che scriveva David che il finale dell'articolo
:P


 :P
Senza nulla togliere a David, l'articolo del times riportato nel tuo post,
che gia' avevo letto, e' notevole: la similitudine proposta tra calcio e
scherma e rispettivi equilibri e' davvero fantastica.
Chapeau.

[MEGACUT]
Grazie per averlo segnalato!