EURO 2012:Given their lack of options up front, Ireland's Euro 2012 rivals are tempted to call on the reckless striker, writes EMMET MALONE
CESARE PRENDELLI’S suggestion on Monday that he will “calmly evaluate” Mario Balotelli’s case for inclusion in his squad for the European Championships in the light of events at the Emirates over the weekend says something about the state of Italy manager’s options up front less than two months the team’s opening Euro2012 game against title holders Spain.
Prandelli dropped the 21-year-old striker for the Azzuri’s last friendly against the USA in February after the player was handed a ban for stamping on Scott Parker a few weeks previously, stating: “I don’t want players who commit reaction fouls and get sent off. He seems a little agitated to me. When I say we have to reach the European Championship prepared, I mean I don’t want to see players who, at the first sign of difficulty, commit reaction fouls and get sent off, leaving their team-mates to struggle with 10 men.”
Roberto Mancini has said much the same about Balotelli and far from differentiating between Sunday’s dismissal against Arsenal and any of the previous times the striker has seen red while playing for Manchester City, he appears to have completely given up on the player, suggesting he would seek to sell him in the summer.
On Monday, though, Prandelli said he had seen the latest incident involving Balotelli but suggested he was not as concerned on this occasion as “this time it was for a foul that was part of the game”.
True, both the late challenge on Bacary Sagna for which the player received his second yellow card, as well as the first-half clash with Alex Song that should have earned him a straight red, were ostensibly attempts to win the ball. But both were reckless and needless and it is difficult to see how Prandelli can have any more trust in the young striker – who played a combined total of just 19 minutes of Italy’s qualification campaign – going into the European Championships than Mancini has in him now.
Prandelli’s difficulty, though, is that with two of his three most used strikers from the qualification campaign still major doubts for the summer, he does not have a long list of particularly attractive options.
He continues to pin his hopes, it seems, on Antonio Cassano who is now back in light training after a panel of medics and officials cleared him to play again in the wake of the stroke and subsequent heart problems that afflicted him at the start of November.
The 29-year-old, who got six goals in the qualifiers (two each against the Faroes, Estonia and Northern Ireland) required surgery to fix a defect in his heart and while it was a fairly straightforward procedure it had initially been assumed his season was over. Prandelli, though, clearly never gave up hope and recently said that he is “waiting for him”.
Cassano’s collapse, on the way home with his Milan team-mates after a game at Roma, came just days after Villarreal striker Giuseppe Rossi suffered anterior cruciate ligament damage in a game against Real Madrid. The 25-year-old is due back in the next couple of weeks, most likely against Real Sociedad on April 22nd, but he will have no more than a handful of games under his belt before the championships with no guarantee that he will not suffer problems over the course of the comeback.
In the meantime, things have not been going well for Prandelli with his side having lost their last two friendly games, against Uruguay and the USA, without scoring.
The team’s last goals came in the 2-0 friendly win over Poland in November when Balotelli and, the third most regularly played striker the team’s qualifying campaign, Giampaolo Pazzini, got a goal each. The Inter striker, though, has not been setting the world on fire in Serie A this season with just five goals and Prandelli replaced him for the team’s two most recent outings with Alessandro Matri of Juventus, while Parma’s Sebastian Giovinco as well as Fabio Borini and Pablo Osvaldo (both of Roma) were also given opportunities.
None managed to make anything like a compelling case for inclusion from the outset against Spain and Prandelli now has just two games, against Luxembourg and Russia, in late May and early June, to hit upon a successful formula, with everything in front of playmaker Andrea Pirlo up for grabs.
Borini’s club form – he has nine in 19 league games – at least suggests that he is playing with some confidence at the moment although Prandelli’s most prolific options from Serie A are the veterans Antonio Di Natale and Fabrizio Miccoli, both of whom have been left out in the international cold for some time.
At 34 now, Di Natale must have seemed an obvious one to move on after the failed 2010 World Cup campaign, in which he scored against Slovakia, but his form for Udinese has since been consistently strong and he is again the league’s top scoring Italian player, eight goals ahead of Palermo’s Miccoli, who said last season he had given up hope of ever earning an international recall.
Di Natale’s performance at the weekend, when he scored one and had a hand in the other two of Udinese’s goals in a 3-1 win, prompted further calls for his return but that would require a major about turn by Prandelli.
The coach did say last week that he hadn’t ruled it out but after investing a great deal in the search for a suitable alternative without a great deal to show for his efforts, Balotelli’s latest carry on really should have made his mind up.
