Serie A now favors the game The draw without a goal is a rarity

Only four 0-0 out of 110 matches: a record that reflects a new mentality The metamorphosis “signed” by Mancini and his beautiful and elegant national team

Pizza, spaghetti and mandolin resist, another archetype of Made in Italy collapses: the bolt is increasingly marginal, obscured by a dynamic and courageous football, based on development and not on the destruction of the game. Symbol of the revolution, Roberto Mancini’s national team, beautiful and not only solid, elegant like him: «I believe that abroad – declared the coach with pride – the thinking towards Italy has changed a bit. You have to know how to defend, but also always attack and not make a difference between home and away, against any opponent ».

The European championship won without torn jerseys (that of Zico, at the hands of Gentile, remains an icon of Mundial 82 as much as Tardelli’s scream), however, is not the effect of an isolated experiment, but of a broader tactical and mental evolution that finds confirmation in the first segment of the championship: the decline of the away barricades, the ferocious markings and the exasperated counterattack led, in fact, to the extinction, or almost, of the symbolic result: zero to zero.

In eleven days, or 110 matches, just four have blossomed: an even more significant number taking into account the dates, because two goals without a goal date back to the second day of the championship.

The truth is that even the “little ones”, once intimidated and perched, now dare, and that the coaches on average favor the search for offensive patterns to the study of antidotes to stifle the maneuver of others. A question of new culture, but also of personal stories: there are very few former defenders on the Serie A benches and no one, from Pioli to Dionisi, has the vocation to dig trenches.

Of course, the “first do not take them” remains a slogan, but it does not deny evolution: proposing, attacking, favoring aesthetics and the spin does not exclude that successes have their roots in robustness. The leaders Napoli and Milan, in fact, do not have the best attack but they boast the least beaten defenses, particularly armored (3 goals conceded) that of Spalletti. It is also true that the sunset from zero to zero (we have filed less than Liga, Premier and Bundesliga) has as its contributing cause the new rules allied to the strikers, and above all, the aridity of the great school of defenders: between zones and diagonals inculcated since as children, we end up neglecting the art of tight control, of subtracted space, of the bitten ball and not just caressed. Perhaps, when the central were stoppers and the right-back was glued to the wing, there would have been some zero to zero more: immense champions could not have replicated the same goal or mocked the registry.

On the other hand, thanks to the proactive technicians and the brilliant game, but if there are many goals it is also due to inattention in the garrison: not coincidentally Annibale Frossi, blue winger of the Thirties, gold medal at the Berlin Olympics, considered zero to zero perfect result, expression of the total balance between the attack and the defense of the teams in the field. Theory. And, anyway, perfection is not beauty. Italy-Germany four to three may have been full of mistakes, but for over 50 years it has been an emotion. And then the 0-0 are not all the same: they are often a mirror of boredom, often the effect of epic resistances and, in turn, emotions. –