Diamonds are forever as Lippi’s change of tactics dazzles Bulgarians

BARELY four minutes into Wednesday night’s game between Italy and Bulgaria the Turin crowd was already aware that something had changed.

It wasn’t just that Marcello Lippi’s starting line-up included seven Juventus players. Both Italy’s tactical set up and their style of play were different.

In the Confederations Cup, the Italians experimented with a 4-3-3 formation and looked a shadow of a World Cup winning side. In their most recent matches, they switched to 4-4-2 and seemed ponderous and predictable.

Against Bulgaria, Lippi turned to the diamond formation and suddenly they seemed like a different side.

Diamonds may not be in fashion elsewhere, but in Italy they’re all the rage. Inter, Milan and now Juventus have all gone for the diamond – the Italians know it as rombo (rhombus) – and on Wednesday it looked as though Lippi had found a formula which could transform Italy from World Cup hopefuls to real contenders.

“The diamond formation relies on having the most creative player as the link man between midfield and attack,” says Riccardo Pratesi of the Gazzetta dello Sport. “Players such as Sneijder, Diego and Ronaldinho. And because Lippi doesn’t have such a player in the squad he made a virtue out of necessity and pushed Andrea Pirlo forward into his old playmaker position.”

In fact the change went further than that. On Wednesday there was no apparent holding player, with the midfield quartet of Pirlo, De Rossi, Camoranesi and Marchisio exchanging and rotating positions.

Marchisio was a great success in only his second game for his country. The energy and the application of the young Juventus midfielder put the Bulgarians under pressure from the start and energy and pressing were a notable feature of Italy’s first-half performance – in Italian opinion possibly their best 45 minutes since they won the World Cup.

“It’s the same recipe that has proved successful in the Champions League over the past few years,” says Riccardo Pratesi. “In Europe the successful teams are those which get the ball down and play, are committed to attack and impose their own game. On Wednesday it also worked for us.”

Lippi’s team revelled in the flexibility of the system, but the plan was obviously made a lot easier because so many of the team play for the same club. It also helped that they were playing in their own stadium and in front of their own fans.

In Dublin, Italy will not have those advantages, and they will be without at least one of their Juventus contingent, as Fabio Cannavaro’s booking means he will be suspended.

Ireland will also try not to give Italy as much space as Bulgaria did.

“Because Bulgaria needed to win the game more than we did they allowed us space to play through the channels,” says Roberto Beccantini, football writer for Turin paper La Stampa. “That wasn’t the case with Georgia. Georgia literally suffocated us for an hour. Our energy levels also fell off towards the end of the game.”

The lessons for Giovanni Trapattoni’s Ireland team are clear: give this Italian side space and they can slaughter you. Italy may also play a tactically different game in Dublin because their defence still looks vulnerable against pace.

But Wednesday night was not a one-off says Beccantini.

“It was impossible for us to play worse than we did in that first half in Tbilisi, and this time it seems to me that Italy have not simply turned a page, or altered a formation – they’ve changed the book.”