Italy should consider unthinkable says Zola
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Your support makes all the difference.A foreigner, coaching Italy? For a nation which prides itself as the technical masters of the world's favourite game, it is a thought that would not long ago have been tantamount to heresy. Yet such is plight of Italian football that Chelsea's Gianfranco Zola has suggested that it is time for Italy to follow England's lead and appoint a foreign coach.
No person from outside Italy has held the reins of the national team. England broke with tradition by hiring the Swede Sven Goran Eriksson after Euro 2000, and Zola says it could be time for Italy to replace Giovanni Trapattoni with a foreigner. "I saw the match in Cardiff and I was very angry to see an international so lacking in quality, it is this that makes me angry more than the result," he said.
Wales beat Italy 2-1 in that European Championship game. Just four days before that, Italy were held to a 1-1 home draw by Yugoslavia. The Italian Football Association yesterday announced that it will meet to discuss Trapattoni's fate in the first week of November.
"Italian football has to be more positive and more open to new ideas, they have to impose their own play," Zola added. "In England you no longer get to see the Serie A, evidently it does not attract enough people. Maybe Trapattoni's substitute should be a foreign manager."
At last summer's World Cup there was a general acceptance that Italy had been on the receiving end of some dubious refereeing decisions when South Korea beat them with an extra-time goal. But then the consensus was that Italy got what they deserved after choosing to sit back and defend once they had scored the game's first goal.
Zola himself may have made a difference in last week's game. He is off to a scintillating start with Chelsea and is the leading scorer in the Premiership with eight goals. And, when Zola talks these days, people are going to listen. He has benefited this season from an extended run in the Chelsea team under Claudio Ranieri, who preferred the Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Eidur Gudjohnsen partnership last season.
Zola has virtually replaced Gudjohnsen in the line-up and made the most of his opportunity. "If I continue like this I will have to think about a new agreement," he said. There had been speculation last season that this year would be his last.
"My secret? Golf. It relaxes me but most of all the fact that I continue to give everything, in training and on the pitch, at 36 you have to work harder than everyone else. If I think that I am 20 years older than [Wayne] Rooney I get the shudders." Everton's Rooney became the youngest goalscorer in Premiership history when netting an injury-time winner against Arsenal at the weekend.
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