Italy 0 Uruguay 1

Today should have been an omen. When you work in the aerospace industry and something goes wrong with the parts you provide it creates a bit of a fire storm.  When I walked into that today I knew the day was going to be rough and Italy's nightmare simply compounded that.

Truth be told I have watched the game in brief tidbits, even now I am watching the last 30 minutes again and before I dig deep into this tactically I fully intend to watch it again.  In the meantime; however, I need to vent some of the frustration I have with this team and Prandelli.  The biggest issue I have is tin the ideology of play and that it should transcend what a team can do from match to match.  Instead of a well organized machine with a tactical focus that makes sense, we had a team without a real identity.  The result then should not be a surprise to us, as Milan fans we have endured this for much of the l season.  This Italian team lacked a true core, it lacked true direction and it lacked an identity.  It got what it deserved...

To go from a functional 3-5-2 to support the Juventus model to a strange hybrids of formation that looked more like fantasy then function is not the mark of tactical leadership.  Prandelli struggled to adjust to different issues in the games and if you look at England with Chiellini wide, Candreva benched against Costa Rica, and today's Immobile debacle the fall guy is clear.  You can remove all the nonsense with the biting, PKs and Red Cards, these are all issues in football that every team contends with.  At the end of the day this team was underprepared and tactically inept.  With Prandelli we should see the end of much of this generation; Buffon, DDR, Chiellini and even Pirlo.

Oddly in that bucket one can argue that Balotelli could end up there as well.  Yes he scored, but the rest of the World Cup for him was a joke  We talked about how this could be his mark, a change and evolution for him.  Instead we now have a player who needs to seriously be considered for transfer from AC Milan and if a bit of time away from the National Team to grow is the right next step.  Much of this 400 words was written in the post match emotion and with some time and review of the match again I will assemble with less emotion.  At the end of day emotion and opinion is what a blog is for, isn't it?