Ventura on Italy, Gattuso, the young people and the elimination with Bosnia

“It’s not all the fault of the coaches, it’s clear. He has his responsibilities, but it’s not a problem of the federal president or the coach, but rather of culture, of the system. We always pretend nothing happened. After 2006, we went out immediately in both 2010 and 2014. Then we didn’t qualify for three World Cups in a row. The last European Championship was very bad. There was only the parenthesis of the European Championship we won, the classic exception that proves the rule.” Giampiero Ventura, guest of “Radio Anch’io Sport”, absolves Gattuso after Italy failed to qualify for the World Cup for the third time in a row.

since 2018

—

“Every time we find ourselves talking, explaining. The critical issues are structural, the government must intervene, not just the federal one. Everyone has their own recipe. It’s one thing to say it and another thing to do it. Nothing has changed since Italy-Sweden in 2017”, insists Ventura, on the bench of the national team in the play-off which denied the Azzurri a pass to Russia in 2018. “We were eliminated by Sweden, who then finished fifth in the World Cup – he recalls – The attack was personal, it was necessary to find a scapegoat. It is now part of the past.

generation

—

“Would I take back a hot potato like that of the national team? Absolutely not. I wouldn’t have wanted to take it even when I took it. After a very short time, I realized that I had made the wrong choice and it was a moment in which I could have made different choices, even very interesting ones. But there’s no use feeling sorry for yourself. The conditions weren’t there then, they aren’t there today. Whoever sits on the blue bench will encounter objective difficulties.” Ventura understands what Gattuso is going through: “I’ve been through it too, you feel responsible for not having achieved the objective. The important thing is that, in his heart, he knows he has done his best. I advise him to calmly go back to doing the job he has always done. With the conviction that this with the national team was a bad accident along the way, but that it can happen in the world of football. The next coach? I think he is the least of the problems. Whatever the coach, if he is not put in the conditions to work at his best, he will always operate in this difficult context. In 2006 we won because we had a generation of phenomena. Today this generation does not exist. We must first create the conditions for a coach to have a radical impact.”

youth and coaches

—

In this regard, Ventura reveals that, like Baggio, he had presented a report to relaunch Italian football. “Buildings are built from the foundations, not from the attic. Once upon a time, young people played 4-5 hours a day, every day. They played on the street or in oratories. If these spaces no longer exist because society has changed, new ones must be created. Capable and paid coaches-educators must be placed in the centers, who do not have the objective of winning the tournament, but of creating and growing. After having created and grown, there must be no dispersion: the transition from spring to the first team is too great in Italy”. Ventura mentions Vergara, who “has always been with Napoli, but he wouldn’t have played even a minute and if there hadn’t been all the injuries that Napoli have had this year. Pisilli himself has been known for a long time, he could have had a lot more minutes on his shoulders and legs”. But not only that: “Once upon a time we lived solely and exclusively on technique. Nowadays, often in the youth sectors, the coach’s ambition is not to develop a talent, but to achieve an objective in order to then leave the youth sector and make progress individually. We need to change our attitude, the way we propose and present ourselves.”