Drama, protests, tactical speculation, pauses: our championship does not train in the football that is now played all over the world. And if the best dribbler in Italy is a full-back…
Intensity is like the shallot that enters all recipes. As soon as Italian football stumbles, the word “intensity” jumps to the top of the trend topics. His fault. Of everything. Even climate change. “We lack intensity.” Yesterday, however, the Cies football observatory provided us with data to talk about it in a slightly less vague way. He defined the concept of sprint: a speed of 25 km/h maintained for at least 0.7 seconds.
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Then he drew up the ranking of the European championships in which the most meters are covered in a sprint. That’s what intensity is: fast running continuity. In first place is the Premier League with 199.6 metres. Then the Dutch championship (193.7 m) and the Swiss championship (190 m). Italy? Outside the top 10, also preceded by France, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, Germany and Türkiye. Serie A, full of dramas, protests, tactical speculation and continuous pauses, does not train prolonged sprinting. Thus, if Norway changes pace, the Azzurri find themselves like Sinner’s opponents, a monster of intensity: hit with balls, unable to sustain a high pace. It also happens to our clubs in the cup. If Roma, who have a smaller squad than many, are ahead, it is because Gasp has already educated the intensity of Atalanta, the most revolutionary Italian team of the last 10 years. Never seen revolutionaries walking. You either dribble an opponent or outspeed him. The player with the most successful dribbles is a full-back (Palestra, 17), far from Yamal (33) and Mbappè (30). We don’t know how to sprint or dribble. The playoffs are not an insult to our history, but a faithful mirror.