Italy to unveil Prandelli as new coach in July

Cesare Prandelli will be officially unveiled as the new coach of now-deposed world champions Italy on July 1, Italian Football Federation president Giancarlo Abete said on Friday.

Incumbent Marcello Lippi’s tenure as head coach effectively ended on Thursday when the reigning champions were embarrassingly bundled out of the World Cup here following a shock 3-2 defeat to Slovakia.

That left them bottom of what had looked a fairly easy Group F, including Paraguay and rank-outsiders New Zealand, and condemned Italy to their worst ever World Cup showing.

But Abete spoke of the need to start from scratch to reinvigorate the national team.

“I feel great sadness for yesterday’s very negative result. The Federation needs to start over, I know exactly how important football is in Italy, how important the national team is to tens of millions of fans and from July 1 Prandelli will be presented as the new coach,” said Abete from Italy’s Casa Azzurri camp here, just south of Pretoria.

“Prandelli has been picked for his technical abilities and not simply for his character.

“Without doubt the objective with Prandelli is to engage in a long period of cooperation, he will have a four-year contract, hence taking him to the end of the next World Cup.”

Just as Lippi, who won the World Cup with Italy in 2006 before taking a two-year sabbatical, took full responsibility for the team’s failure, Abete was not shirking his part in the blame either.

“I have the responsibility of being the president of the federation and hence the team,” he said.

“I chose Lippi and I don’t regret that. There’s no need to regret the choice after the European Championships of taking back the coach who had won the World Cup,” he said before lamenting the lack of quality in Italian football and the lack of Italian players playing in big clubs.

“There’s a deficiency in the competitiveneness of the Italian team and the result was yesterday’s dramatic effect.

“It’s not about being pessimistic for the future, but being realistic and reactionary.

“We have legitimate worries which is not pessimism. We have a problem that many players are not getting international experience.

“It’s the same in all championships but many big clubs don’t have Italians on their roster and the top Italian players don’t have the experience of playing at the top level. We have little expertise at the top level.”

Six of Italy’s starting XI against Slovakia played Champions League football last season but three of those (Juventus’s Vincenzo Iaquinta and Gennaro Gattuso and Gianluca Zambrotta of AC Milan) played little due to a combination of injuries and not always being first choice for their clubs.

However, Abete said that could not explain the country’s inept showing in the first half against the Slovaks.

“The failure to beat New Zealand made the players lose confidence because the first half against Slovakia left everyone dumbfounded,” he said.

“In the first half we didn’t even manage to string two passes together, it wasn’t a case of pushing, creating but not finishing.

“That first half, objectively, was unwatchable. It wasn’t a problem with physical preparation, the players failed to understand the importance of the game and didn’t have faith in their own abilities.”