From Germany the'latest stilettata: "Italy has fallen behind"

After the great bitterness of the playoffs, which ousted Italy for the third consecutive time from the World Cup finals, critics’ attention has now shifted to the impact of Serie A clubs in Europe’s top competition, the Champions League. The final reached by Inter last year seems a distant memory: Napoli failed to make it past the single round, Inter and Juventus flopped in the play-off for the round of 16 against Bodo/Glimt e and Galatasaray, Atalanta played an extra round but collapsed with Bayern Munich.

And it is precisely from a former of the Bavarians, Philipp Lahm, that comes yet another stylistic jab at Italian soccer, from the columns of the ‘Guardian’: “Italy has fallen behind and Germany must not go down that road,” said the 2014 world champion. I see in the Bundesliga a return of man-to-man defense, with players chasing opponents even in the bathroom. Even Bayern does that sometimes and it’s not good. You can do it for short stretches of the match, to put pressure on, but it cannot be the strategy for ninety minutes.”

“The Spanish school has now surpassed the Italian school,” Lahm himself later rejoined. Their defense is oriented on the ball and not on the man, the game is developed in the opponent’s half of the field and not in their own. On the other hand, Spanish clubs have won so much in this century in European competitions, and the Spanish national team itself has won three of the last five editions of the European Championships, always showing itself superior to its opponents.”

“Not even the Germany of the 1970s and 1980s, the one Gary Lineker was referring to when he said that soccer is ‘a sport that is played eleven against eleven and in which the Germans win in the end,’ achieved such dominance. Spain is the model to follow, without any doubt,” Philipp Lahm said again.