Blog: The void behind Buffon
Italy may have Gigi Buffon but, as Antonio Labbate states, they are on the verge of a goalkeeping crisis
Sometimes Gigi Buffon is not enough. Italian football should realise as much by taking a brief look at Marcello Lippi’s latest Azzurri squad. It’ll only take a glance because all you need to read are the names of Gianluca Curci and Morgan De Sanctis to realise that the Italian game is in the grip of a goalkeeping crisis.
Injuries to the Juventus custodian and his international understudy, Marco Amelia of Palermo, have stripped bare one of calcio’s great weaknesses. Not only is the peninsula failing to regularly produce the kind of central defender which was once the envy of the world, there’s now a clear shortage of superior quality shot-stoppers with an Italian passport.
It’s a far cry from the 1990s when Serie A was littered with net-minders of the highest calibre. As Walter Zenga and Stefano Tacconi came towards the end of their careers, the likes of Gianluca Pagliuca, Angelo Peruzzi, Luca Marchegiani, Luca Bucci, Francesco Toldo and Buffon were early into theirs. Today there is just Gigi and not much more.
Curci is a good prospect, but there is no doubt that he could have been much further on in his development had he not wasted two years on the Roma bench. A small, stocky individual in the Peruzzi mould, Gianluca though remains suspect when dealing with long-range efforts. De Sanctis, now in Turkey with Galatasaray, is nothing special either.
Additionally, quite why Matteo Sereni of Torino – the best of an average bunch – isn’t given a go is a mystery. His omission should be filed alongside Lippi’s reluctance to give Antonio Cassano the player a chance, no matter what he may think of Cassano the man.
The abolition of the three foreigner rule is arguably the reason why you are even reading this today. Although it didn’t guarantee great goalkeepers, it did at the very least allow Italians playing time in between the sticks. Only Parma opted to ‘waste’ one of their three spots on a 'keeper when they signed Claudio Taffarel in 1990.
Today, Serie A is over-run with non-Italian shot-stoppers. Inter have Julio Cesar, Alexander Doni is at Roma with two other Brazilians, Fiorentina’s No 1 shirt is on the back of Frenchman Sebastien Frey, Juan Carrizo is at Lazio and Udinese have Samir Handanovic. Even the smaller clubs have stranieri goalkeepers and Milan only reverted to Christian Abbiati this term.
As a result, we find ourselves in a position where men such as Federico Agliardi, Luca Castellazzi and Antonio Mirante haven’t progressed to a level once hoped for, the highly-rated Emiliano Viviano is forced to play his football in Serie B with Brescia and 18-year-old Sampdoria youth Vincenzo Fiorillo is already dealing with the pressure of being labelled the new Buffon. And boy do Italy need one.
A blog from Channel4.com.
Abbiati has been great for us so far this season,I don`t get why he doesn`t get called up,at least while Amelia and Buffon are injured.