http://www.footballiscominghome.info Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:59:27 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 http://www.footballiscominghome.info/the-players/why-the-world-champions-wont-repeat-in-2010/ http://www.footballiscominghome.info/the-players/why-the-world-champions-wont-repeat-in-2010/#comments Sun, 04 Apr 2010 19:43:01 +0000 Peter Alegi http://www.footballiscominghome.net/?p=1835

The Old Lady of Italian football was humiliated 0-3 by struggling Udinese this weekend, making it 12 losses and 47 goals against in 32 serie A matches this season. After this latest embarrassment, the formerly powerful and prestigious Juventus FC apologized to millions of fans and began a ’silenzio stampa’ (no media interviews until further notice).

Yet Marcello Lippi continues to live in an alternate universe and appears ready to go to South Africa with between half and two-thirds of the Azzurri’s starting 11 from Juve’s ranks. Tired pensioners like Cannavaro, Legrottaglie, Camoranesi and Grosso are like a concrete block around Italy’s neck. Unless Lippi has a last-minute change-of-heart, then expect the Azzurri to sink fast come June.

Share/Save]]> http://www.footballiscominghome.info/the-players/why-the-world-champions-wont-repeat-in-2010/feed/ 2 http://www.footballiscominghome.info/the-players/pharma-calcio/ http://www.footballiscominghome.info/the-players/pharma-calcio/#comments Sat, 10 Oct 2009 04:37:34 +0000 Peter Alegi http://www.footballiscominghome.net/?p=1262

By now you’ve heard the news: 2006 World Player of the Year and Italy captain Fabio Cannavaro failed a doping test in late August, testing positive for cortisone.  The Italian football establishment–players, coaches, officials, media–came out in his defense.  “The cortisone was lifesaving treatment for a bee sting!” it was claimed.  “I was once stung by a wasp,” joked his manager at Juve, “but it was not the same as Cannavaro’s, as there was no need for me to use cortisone.” (I thought adrenaline injections or inhalers were the best emergency treatment for stings.)  Skeptics wonder why it took two months for the positive test to be publicized. “It’s just a bureaucratic mistake,” proffered the Italian national team doctor. Given the well documented history of performance-enhancing drugs in Italian football, and in world sport more broadly, these explanations invite scrutiny.

It was in August 1998 that AS Roma manager Zdenek Zeman stunned us with revelations about widespread doping in Serie A.  A few weeks later, Italy’s only IOC-accredited anti-doping laboratory was shut down (for one year).  Cannavaro himself was implicated in PED use after being shown on national TV enjoying an IV drip of Neoton in a Moscow hotel room before the 1999 UEFA Cup final, a fact confirmed by his lawyer. And Juve’s current manager, Ciro Ferrara, played for Marcello Lippi’s pharmaceutically enhanced Juve side in the 1990s, a team whose physician received a 22-month suspended sentence for his involvement. Several years and one World Cup triumph later, the specter of pharma-calcio is still with us.

Share/Save]]> http://www.footballiscominghome.info/the-players/pharma-calcio/feed/ 0