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Tardelli keen to avoid do-or-die battle

Tuesday, June 05, 2012

By David Shonfield

No one can be more qualified than Marco Tardelli to under-stand the pressures on players in a major tournament — and the twists of fate that separate triumph from disaster.

In Budapest on Sunday he was reminiscing with Italian journalists about his experiences in 1982, when a team that drew its first three games and should have gone out in the first round went on to triumph at the expense of Brazil and West Germany.

“Just think if we arrived at the Ireland-Italy game and a draw would allow both teams to go through. It would be real sporting drama. The eyes of the world would be on us and we’d have to live with all sorts of nasty suggestions.”

“Better to avoid that nightmare and be able to play all out for 90 minutes with two good results behind us. That way we could all sleep easily.”

“Doing the biscuit” — fare il biscotto — they call it in Italian. In the old days trainers used to slip their horses a little something on a biscuit to disguise their form before a big race.

In football it refers to the sham games at the end of the season when opposing teams do each other favours to avoid the risk of relegation.

Italy captain Gigi Buffon was in hot water last week after seeming to defend the practice.

Tardelli believes he has been unfairly condemned.

“I want to defend Buffon for what he said about teams agreeing draws. Gigi would have done better to keep quiet, but he was telling the truth. Sometimes during the course of a game it comes about that two teams find themselves sharing a common interest.

“It happens and it has always happened. Do you need me to remind you about Sweden-Denmark during the European finals in Portugal?”

Both sets of players furiously denied any skulduggery, but Sweden’s late equaliser in that match allowed the two Scandinavian rivals to go through to the knock-out stage at Italy’s expense. It also cost Giovanni Trapattoni his job. The difficulty now is that such deals have become linked to criminal activity.

“The question is this: do we really want to change something? Or do we yet again start by declaring the third world war and end up with a phoney? Italians have a gut reaction to scandals but they quickly turn the page.”

Taking the problem seriously means taking draconian action, says Tardelli.

Life bans: and life must mean life.

“Not three months or six months. Forever. People who have committed these wrongs should not have another chance, they should be excluded from the world of football — including commentating. But instead of that we have personalities who were condemned and who are still inside the game.

“In England people bet on everything and there are no problems. One needs to evaluate situation by situation. For example from what I’ve read in the papers Paolo Cannavaro and Grava (two Napoli players under suspicion) should not be punished. On the contrary they should be praised for reporting the people who were proposing illicit acts.

“Italian football needs to be rebuilt with new values. We have a wrong mentality. Although remember Henry’s handball goal that put us out of the World Cup: and Henry is French.”

When it comes to the Italian threat Tardelli wasn’t giving much away at the weekend, except that he thinks Mario Balotelli could be a bigger problem than Andrea Pirlo.

“It’s easy to say Pirlo, he’s Italy’s guiding light, but while Balotelli may be daft he is a player who makes the difference on the pitch. I’ve seen him do it a lot for City. He knows how to be decisive even if he only plays a few minutes.”

The Italians will respond to adversity as they did in 1982, Tardelli believes, when his friend Paolo Rossi was brought back into the side after being suspended because of another betting scandal and scored the hat-trick that knocked out Brazil.

“Italians know how to react in difficult moments; think back to the 2006 World Cup.”

His worry he says is that Ireland’s fortunes will change.

“So far we’ve never lost to my friend Prandelli. It’s a jinx. Even this statistic is against us. On the law of averages...”

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