Reuters Soccer Blog

Balotelli courts maturity not Milan

Mario Balotelli has got into more scrapes than a bad teenage skateboarder but the maturing Italy striker has finally found some inner peace and his game is therefore flourishing.

A goal and commanding performance in Friday’s 2-0 friendly win in Poland followed other good displays for Manchester City, notably the 6-1 hammering of Manchester United at Old Trafford.

After scoring in that derby he revealed a T-shirt which read “Why always me?”, a question the colourful character also used to pose while playing at Inter Milan.

He is rarely allowed to speak publicly by PR men scared at what the 21-year-old will say next but in one post-match interview in Serie A in January last year, the forward made himself a comedy hero among many Italian fans.

“These things always seem to happen to me,” he said after picking up a needless yellow card in an Inter game at Chievo Verona which meant a suspension.

His self deprecation pricked ears and TV viewers across Italy thought he might finally be growing up.

However, in what was then typical style and with the interview apparently over, Balotelli suddenly lurched back into the shot and said: “I want to say one thing. Every time I come here to Verona this crowd disgusts me more and more.”

Who is new Inter coach Gian Piero Gasperini?

It is the question on the lips of many football fans around the world. Why would the 2010 European champions recruit an unknown as coach?

Inter would argue Gasperini is not a nobody having guided Genoa to decent success in Serie A but the fact he was sacked by the mid-table side in November is not particularly aupiscious. He was also shocked to get the job.

Some may ask why no other club recruited him until now, but the simple answer is that coaches in Serie A are not allowed to train two team in the same season.

This doesn’t mean Gasperini was Inter’s first choice though. Far from it. Marcelo Bielsa, Andre Villas-Boas and Sinisa Mihajlovic were all contacted along with probably several other more high profile figures.

The fact Inter have struggled to recruit a top name after boasting Jose Mourinho, Rafa Benitez and Leonardo in the last year is probably as much a reflection on Serie A as it is on the club.

Italian football has been outstripped by Spain and England on the pitch and in terms of financial clout with the onset of UEFA’s financial fairplay likely to hit Inter and AC Milan quite badly given they rely on rich benefactor owners Massimo Moratti and Silvio Berlusconi.

Ageing stadiums, match-fixing scandals and hooliganism make Italy not the hot destination it was once was.

Soccer Break Thursday

Gareth Bale. The dashing Welsh winger primed to scare the living daylights out of England on Saturday. Injured. Did anyone else hear that collective sigh of relief from England fans today?

But what about Tottenham Hotspur fans. Are you worried your star man’s recent struggles with injury could hamper your club’s Champions League quarter-final chances against Real Madrid?

There are of course plenty of qualifiers this weekend so read our preview for all the latest.

Anna on the Italian Soccer Serie A has picked what she reckons might be Italy’s team to play Slovenia in Friday’s Euro 2012 qualifier having spied on Cesare Prandelli’s training sessions. Read more here.

Our man Simon Evans in Miami has written a blog on a player familiar with Spurs, Real, and Euro qualifiers. Read on for the latest on David Beckham’s US adventure.

We’ve a bit of a US theme going today in fact. NFL player Chad Ochocinco (see last Thursday’s Soccer Break) has started his soccer experiment. Can he be successful?

Over in San Francisco, spare a thought for a referee on the receiving end of a player’s anger.

Chambery’s French passion underlines renaissance of domestic cups

Fifth division Chambery’s stunning win over top-flight Sochaux to reach the French Cup quarter-finals has got a lot of people talking and I think it’s fair to say domestic cup competitions around Europe are enjoying a bit of a resurgence.

As this week proved with other games, Cup shocks are nothing new in France – something I knew before moving to Paris on Monday — but the fact newspapers and fans are stilll excited about Chambery’s run speaks volumes.

A packed little stadium for a game played in the midweek afternoon, a huge front page picture in L’Equipe and non-soccer fans mentioning the win in lifts all go to show that there is still magic in the Cup.

The FA Cup in England has taken a bit of a battering over recent years but minor league side Crawley Town being drawn at Manchester United in the fifth round and moneybags Manchester City needing 30 million pound striker Edin Dzeko to salvage a draw at third division Notts County has brought back a lot of romance.

In Italy, where the Italian Cup has been derided for years, top teams are suddenly playing their main sides in the competition and not rotating.

This is partly because of unusually stretched squads this season due to injuries but also Inter Milan’s treble last term showed how important the Cup could sometimes be. It’s also getting tight at the top of Serie A for Champions League places so a Europa League berth through the Cup could be very handy.

Real Madrid and Barcelona have been taking the King’s Cup very seriously and their predictable meeting in the final will be billed as one of the biggest ever battles between them given there is direct silverware at stake.

What has happened to Maicon and Nesta?

Maicon was hailed as the best right back in the world not so long ago but Tottenham’s Gareth Bale has terrorised him twice in two weeks and Inter Milan fans are beginning to wonder if they should have cashed in and sold him to Real Madrid after all in the close season.

In the opposite San Siro dressing room, AC Milan’s Alessandro Nesta will also be getting a little twitchy after being exposed by Real Madrid on Wednesday.

He looked out of position for Gonzalo Higuain’s opener and his distribution was the worst I have seen from him. Even fans sat near me were surprised by his poor display, which shows what high standards Nesta has kept.

Nesta was among the very best centre backs in the world when Milan triumphed in the Champions League in 2007 but a long period of injury since has robbed the 34-year-old of some of his aura.

Juventus also really worried him in their 2-1 win last weekend.

Maicon is a different case, however. The Brazilian is still only 29 and should be in his prime. He was supposed to be the quickest and toughest right back around but speedster Bale completely dominated him.

Rumours of a move to Real were constant during the close season but Inter decided to end talks after deciding he was too good to let go after their treble triumph.

Italian referee leads the way in battling racist chants

Italian soccer has long struggled with racist chanting, a horror which has largely been stamped out in countries like England and Germany.

The problem persists in Italy but finally the tide is turning and ignorant fans are being beaten.

First Mario Balotelli was racially abused by Juventus fans while playing for Inter Milan two seasons ago. Italian soccer authorities had been handing out small fines for years but this time Juve were hit with a one-game stadium ban.  

A fallout from that incident was the decision to allow referees to suspend games if racist chanting is heard.

The odd racist song has continued in Italian stadiums over the past year and nothing was done. Until Sunday.

Only three minutes had been played in Cagliari’s game with Inter Milan when referee Paolo Tagliavento surprised everyone by stopping the match. A public announcement told Cagliari fans the game would be abandoned if the “monkey noises” aimed at Samuel Eto’o carried on.

The game resumed and no more chants were heard.

Serb violence shows soccer still struggling to stop flares

Italian police and stewards knew Tuesday’s Euro qualifier with Serbia could be a tense affair given the two countries’ problems with hooliganism and the high-profile nature of the match.

Why then were so many Serbian fans able to smuggle in flares and cause an abandonment?

Fans are meant to be searched as they enter a ground but this obviously did not happen sufficiently.

In almost every Serie A league game, at least one fan invariably manages to bring a flare or firecracker into the stadium.

They are not partypoppers, they are highly dangerous weapons which can cause serious injury. Italy goalkeeper Emiliano Viviano narrowly avoided a flare hitting him while another was hurled straight into a group of Italy fans, who luckily escaped harm.

Speaking to people in Genoa last night after all the chaos had calmed down (although it later started again with Serbs fighting police as they were cooped up in the stadium car park), I was informed of some of the devious ways fans get flares through turnstile checks.

Certain flares can be broken up into little pieces and then put back together again with special glue while some fans have been caught with flares hidden inside baguette sandwiches or in the inner lining of trousers where the sewn crease should be.

Prandelli breaks the mould by naming his teams a day early

In rugby, teams are often named several days before matches — a habit I’ve never really understood.

If there is any doubt about what lineup you will field, surely it makes sense to keep the opposition coach guessing until the final moment? The advantage may be slight, but it’s there and it might make the other coach mess up his preparations if he guesses wrongly.

In soccer, teams are thus traditionally announced just one hour before kick off. It adds to the drama of matchday for those watching.

However, new Italy coach Cesare Prandelli has broken the mould and has been naming his teams a day before matches. He reads out the lineup and given he is such an honest guy, no one even thinks he is pulling a fast one. Indeed, the Italy teams he has named so far have always lined up the day after.

His opponent for Tuesday’s Euro 2012 qualifier here in Genoa, the Serbia coach Vladimir Petrovic, was bemused by Prandelli’s tactic.

“I can’t tell you much about the formation, it’s a fundamental game,” he said.

Prandelli’s reasons for such openness are his wish to bond with the press and the belief that if players know a day before that they are playing, they can prepare better mentally. There’s no point just telling the players and no one else, the news will leak out. He also named three Sampdoria players and one Genoa defender, hoping to excite the Genoa crowd.

Euro 2012 qualifiers – live

We’re following all tonight’s Euro 2012 qualifiers live. Join us here for updates, comments and pix … and details of all the goals as they go in.

Where do awful Italy go from here?

If you thought Italy were awful at this World Cup it could get even worse in future tournaments.

The slow, unimaginative holders were embarrassed 3-2 by Slovakia on Thursday to crash out in the group stage and retiring captain Fabio Cannavaro reckons the country is just not producing top players anymore.

I asked in a blog before the tournament whether Marcello Lippi’s Italy were the worst ever world champions and now I’m predicting what the team might look like under new coach Cesare Prandelli for Euro 2012, if struggling Italy qualify of course.

A lot of the current team are over 30 and may have had their day so younger players will come in (although young in Italian soccer means 27…). You might not have heard of many of them, and that is exactly the point Cannavaro was making, but Prandelli may want to make radical changes.

Here’s my Italy XI for 2012.

Goalkeeper: Federico Marchetti – Gianluigi Buffon is very injury-prone and there are doubts how much his body can take even if he is having back surgery soon. Marchetti did not do anything wrong in South Africa but doesn’t inspire huge confidence with his constant punching