A Pointless Exercise

As predicted, last night's game was a bit of a pointless exercise. I must admit up front to not having seen it - but more on that it a moment.

As to the game itself, it sounds like the reserve squad played okay, but were nothing special and although Croatia apparently scored from their only two chances, they deserved their victory. At least we have now got the usual excuse of being behind in our physical preparations for the season out of the way!

Let's face it, very few of those boys who played last night are going to feature for the Azzurri in the future - maybe Amelia, Ambrosini and Semioli will get into a squad or two, but they're not going to be first choice picks, so there's no need to be too downheartened. That said, it was a pointless way to lose our 26 game unbeaten run. Let's hope we are just looking to start another unbeaten run from here on in. Certainly, the proper team had better be physically ready for the France game - we do not want to lose that one, simply as a matter of pride.

One final word on last night's game - you will see from the picture above that we did not seem to be playing with the golden ball which we played the World Cup final with. I thought the whole point was that the World Champions get to play with that ball in every game until the next world cup. Is it only official games?

As for why I missed the game - our world cup watching crew (my dad, sister, girlfriend, uncle. cugini and various others) decided to all get together for a meal out to celebrate the world cup win as it's the first time we've all been able to get together since we won. News of the score from Livorno brought the mood down briefly, but fortunately that wasn't something that a few more peroni and grappas couldn't sort out!

Incidentally, you will see I have changed the name of the Blog. It is probably still open to change if anyone can come up with any better suggestions (and no Ginkers, that is not a cue for you to think of more insults to throw my way!)