The loneliness of the number 9 Immobile, the only striker

In an Italy increasingly poor in strikers, the Lazio player resists The bomber in the national team tomorrow: “I’m a leader, I can still give”

the character

If there is, little is seen. But if it’s missing, Italy doesn’t waste a moment asking itself a question: why don’t we have a number 9 anymore? Our football is full of alternatives there in the middle where, now, we love to dribble, but we are in debt of oxygen when the ball enters the penalty area: beyond Ciro Immobile it is difficult to go and Ciro Immobile often ends up having to bear criticism of the role he occupies and not just how he interprets it. The four-time top scorer in Serie A, the 2020 Golden Boot, the forward one step away from the Del Piero-Signori-Gilardino trio, in ninth place in the all-time league striker ranking with 188 goals, is still in his place now that, tomorrow against England in Milan, on Monday against Hungary in Budapest, we must take a hit in the Nations League as the world prepares to land in Qatar.

“I thought I’d say enough, to end my long experience in blue, but – so Immobile – I also thought that others shouldn’t decide for me: I’m still here because I feel one of the leaders of the group and because I can still give something … ». The others, according to Ciro from Lazio, are those enrolled in the social party of offenses, insults, invectives. Blame? Doing well, indeed very well with the biancoceleste shirt and struggling with that of the national team: this is the story of Immobile.

“I pass for the striker of the team that lost the pass for the World Cup and not for that of the group that won the European championship just over a year ago: it takes a strong balance to go forward,” he underlines. Before Immobile there was traffic, in and around the area, beyond Ciro there is the feeling of emptiness or, in any case, of perennial expectation of the new Vieri. Among the boys, in these hours at work with the coach Mancini, for the attack there are Raspadori, number nine a little atypical, and Scamacca, center forward in search of identity at West Ham since last August, plus a long series of winger .

In the background, the possible novelties are called Pinamonti or Pellegri (“I like them both,” says Immobile) with Lucca, chosen by Ajax for 12 million, still too far from an international dimension. Go on with Ciro, then. And on with a guy who doesn’t stop dreaming (“The next World Cup? I believe it …”) and who when he talks about it he does it in depth and without trivial concessions. «The younger ones – he continues – would need the ranks, in football as well as in life. But the mess, in our world, is no longer possible: you make mistakes once and they fail you. I ask myself every day how my different performance between Lazio and the national team is possible, but I can’t give myself an answer. And every day I wonder where the madness on social media can go: in the past I denounced, certain limits cannot be exceeded when it comes to the family, my children. Have you seen what happened to the Lion (Acerbi, ed)? ». Immobile or Belotti: the ballot no longer exists because the Gallo has gone out of Mancini’s radar. Immobile resists, Italy wonders about the number that is not there: if the 9 no longer grow it cannot be just a coincidence, perhaps an eye should be thrown on the working method within the youth teams of the individual clubs. Forward with Ciro: 8 goals in Mancini management, from May 2018 to today. –