Published>Tue, May 25 10 01:53 PM
Marcello Lippi will lead champions Italy in South Africa in their bid to become the first team since the great Brazil of Pele to retain the World Cup trophy.
But even the most ardent of Italy fans count themselves amongst the sceptics.
For one, this Italy team does not have the talent of the 1958 and 1962 Brazil teams and secondly it is not led by a talisman of Pele proportions.
But it is not just the fact that Italy are missing the finishing gloss needed to be great, their engine and chassis hardly strike fear or envy into their opponents either.
And even Lippi acknowledges that this is not the most talented bunch of players he has ever worked with.
But he has been at pains to talk up their merits and remind the doubters of their past glories in similar situations, such as 1982 and 2006 when Italy overcame the odds stacked against them to emerge as unlikely World Cup winners.
"We're going there with great confidence, with a status (as champions) to consolidate while also knowing the strengths of our opponents," said Lippi.
"Many times the national team has started off not being favourites but have achieved exceptional results. We'll give our all."
Even so, it will take all of Lippi's powers of motivation and tactical acumen to get the best out of a group of players who on paper many would say are not even good enough to reach the last eight.
And to do so the former Juventus boss has been stressing the importance of togetherness.
"I've never been as motivated as I am now. I can't wait to begin my second World Cup," he said.
"I think that if we want to close the gap to those teams that are better than us, the only way to do so is to be united.
"Our strength will once again be the group. That's been my secret since I first started coaching in Serie C.
"And the proof in the pudding is that (Lionel) Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo only scraped through with Argentina and Portugal."
It is true that despite Italy's abysmal showing at last year's Confederations' Cup and their generally unimpressive form in qualifying, they did reach the World Cup with a game to spare.
But lightning rarely strikes twice and for this current squad, shorn of a truly world class forward, with a creaking and ageing defence and with increasingly less effective midfield playmakers, to achieve anything, the onus will be on Lippi to mould them into a cohesive unit and cajole one last great effort out of them.
And that will be as tough a task as the veteran coach has ever faced given that he has been more used to guiding a dominant Juventus team in recent years.
However he can draw on a wealth of experience from his early career where he languished in the lower divisions of such unknown footballing outposts as Pontedera, Pistoiese and Carrarese, tolling for results.
Perhaps the experience that will most benefit him, though, was his one season at a bankrupt, free-falling and Diego Maradona-less Napoli, whom he led into Europe, a feat that earned him his move to Juventus, which launched him on the road to fame and glory.
And he will once again need to gel a crumbling empire for one last effort if Italy are to avoid an early and ignominious exit in South Africa.
However, if there is one man who can do it, it is the man who chose to postpone his easy retirement sitting on a veranda in the Tuscan countryside smoking cigars fresh in the knowledge that he had one everything going for club and country.
Lippi chose instead to throw himself back into the mix and tackle the task of satisfying a most demanding nation.
And to do so he will invariably turn to his tried and tested, the likes of goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon, centre-back Fabio Cannavaro and midfielders Andrea Pirlo and Daniele Rossi and ask them to revive the spirit of 2006 once last time.
Source: Web Search
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