Amid all the furore about Luis Suarez it’s easy to forget that, in the wake of the incident, Italy we’re knocked out of the World Cup.
And the fallout from that in itself has been very interesting. Cesare Prandelli, who had signed a new 2 year contract as recently as March, resigned immediately.
In the wake of his departure, Italy’s Daniele De Rossi has had some interesting things to say about a certain mercurial member of the Azzurri squad.
There were certainly components that affected the result, like the heat or the refereeing, but we must not cling to these things.
We must forget about all this quickly. Actually, I take that back: we should remember well what went wrong and begin again with real men.
We need real men, not Panini stickers or characters. These are of no use to the Nazionale.
Anyone familiar with the surreal world of ‘Super Mario’ will know that’s a very thinly veiled reference to Mario Balotelli and his sticker collection.
Balotelli had been substituted at half time following a yellow card and a less than stellar performance against Uruguay. It seems he didn’t take to kindly to this and refused to stick around with the team following Prandelli’s announcement.
You have to think that there’s more than a few of Balotelli’s teammates who have wanted to have a proper moan about him over the years. Kudos to De Rossi for having the balls to do it.
Picture credit SPORTSFILE
Quotes via Football-Italia.net
