UEFA Euro 2012 Preview: Italy

This isn’t your typical Italian team by any means. We were used to watch the Italians led by a masterful tactician coach like Marcello Lippi, Giovanni Trapattoni or Fabio Capello that employed defense as their primary focus, but this time Cesare Prandelli is the National Head Coach and Prandelli is known more for an attacking philosophy and more creativity on his formations. This can be a good thing because if Italy wanted merely to defend they would be in trouble because the actual class of Italian defenders is far away from the level that Fabio Cannavaro, Alessandro Nesta and Paolo Maldini once reached a decade ago.

In the midfield, Prandelli doesn’t have any choice than use a diamond formation because Italy lacks quality wing players. In this formation, Andrea Pirlo is the masterful mind of the team and the only player that the opposing team must nullify in order to slow down the Italian team. The other 3 midfielders will rotate on their positions and they offer some aggressiveness and a good work rate, but none of those players (I’m talking of De Rossi, Marchisio and Montolivo) aren’t a real “number 10” like once Roberto Baggio or Francesco Totti were for the team.

In the front, it looks like Antonio Cassano and Mario Balotelli will be the strikers and you don’t want to mess with these two players! They are talented players, but they can be problematic as well and we should not be surprised if a red card is showed to one of these players.

Strenght(s):

• Unity: Like in the World Cup 2006, the Italian team is coming for this tournament after a domestic scandal, so nobody is counting on them to have a huge tournament and this can create a huge sense of unity in the team. 
• Center midfield: Italia is capable of having a good ball possession because they play with four interior players and they switch their positions quite easily. Pirlo is the leader of the group and Italia’s ability to maintain possession will be a key for them

Weakness(es):

• Defense: Even though they don't have a bad back four, but they just aren’t at the same level that we were used to expect from Italy. 
• Wing players: Italy doesn’t have any play from the wings and this has been hurting them in both ends of the floor. In their friendly matches, Italy has been exposed by their opponents on the wings and after some bad games – they lost 0-1, 0-1 and 0-3 L3 friendly games, Prandelli is considering changing his usual formation to a 3-5-2 formation emulating the 2011/12 domestic Champions Juventus.