The World Cup Injury Watch that has taken hold over the world of football has also landed in Italy, where some believe the left fibula of Francisco Totti is the key to the Azzuri’s hopes in Germany. The Roma striker broke his leg on February 19 and has not played in the Serie A since.

But AC Milan midfielder Gennaro Gattuso made an important point recently when he told a Columbian newspaper that others should worry about the Italians as a whole and not believe that the Italians are a one-man team.

In fact, the Azzuri could be the most balanced of the 32 World Cup teams. Where Brazil are shaky in defense, Italy are still very strong with the always dependable Fabio Cannavaro and Allessandro Nesta. Where the Dutch are extremely talented, but very young, the Italians seem to have the perfect mix of youth and experience with coach Marcello Lippi making a point of introducing newer players into the squad and not being afraid to replace veterans like Alessandro Del Piero and Christian Vieri. And while England is looking to substitute Wayne Rooney with a 17 year old who has never played in the Premiership, the Italians have Luca Toni in case Totti is not fully fit. This past weekend, Toni became the first player in 47 years to score 30 goals in the top Italian League.

So does Italy have any weaknesses?

Only themselves. Despite their strength and experience, they did not make it out of the group stages in Euro 2004 and were beaten by South Korea (and some questionable refereeing) in the Round of 16 in the 2002 World Cup. But even in the group stages in Korea, Italy did little to impress, drawing with Mexico and losing to Croatia.

The Italians can only hope that Lippi can do a better job than previous coach Giovanni Trappatoni at getting his team to live up to their expectations.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 9th, 2006 at 2:16 pm and is filed under World Cup 2006. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.