Try as they might, the Italy players couldn’t stop him. They chased after him, grasped at his shirt in an attempt to pull him back. But they just couldn’t hold him. Roberto Mancini pushed them all away. Moments beforehand, he had finally scored his first goal for his country against West Germany in the opening game of the 1988 European Championship.

He was now running like a man possessed. The pitch couldn’t contain him. Mancini crossed the athletics track, approaching the crowd and the press box in particular at the Rheinstadion in Düsseldorf. By the look of fury on his face and the hand gestures he was throwing, it quickly became clear that rather than celebrate with his teammates he’d chosen to remonstrate with the journalists following the national team.

If that all sounds vaguely familiar then that’s because it’s another example of how, in some respects, Mancini’s playing career closely resembles that of his protégé Mario Balotelli. To find the evidence to support this case, it’s enough to reflect on the events of Italy’s final group stage match of Euro 2012 against the Republic of Ireland.

After scoring a quite spectacular scissor kick in the last minute to seal a 2-0 win, Balotelli got up off the floor and didn’t celebrate as usual. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Except, rather than casually walk back to his own half and await the re-start he instead chose to vent the frustration that had obviously been raging within.

Before he could say anything he might regret, however, defender Leonardo Bonucci showed the presence of mind to place a hand over his teammate’s mouth and avoid a diplomatic incident. Not for the first time, many were left wondering: what on earth had got into Balotelli? His reaction was met with incomprehension in the papers back home. At whom was he aiming this outburst?

Theories abounded.

Some claimed that the partisan crowd in Poznan had riled him. Whistled at once he came on, it’s not a stretch of the imagination to think that following the racist abuse he’d suffered in Italy’s previous match, a 1-1 draw with Croatia – when monkey chants were heard and a banana thrown on to the pitch – Balotelli might have wanted to shut everyone up.

By waving his finger around in a circular motion, he certainly appeared to indicate that he had an issue with those present in the stands, maybe even the press. According to Bonucci: “He said things in English that I didn’t understand.”

Others have suggested that Balotelli was instead directing his rage at Italy coach Cesare Prandelli for dropping him from the starting line up. That seems unlikely given the close bond between the pair. Still, the disappointment at losing his place perhaps did have an impact on his state of mind.

Concern for Balotelli had grown before the Ireland game and persisted for a short while afterwards. Wednesday’s La Gazzetta dello Sport carried the headline: ‘Io Balo da solo’ – a neat play on words meaning: ‘I dance alone’. He reportedly cut an increasingly isolated figure in the Italy squad.

No one had pushed him out. It’s nothing like the end of his time at Inter, for instance, when, after disrespectfully tearing his shirt off and throwing it to the ground following their Champions League semi-final with Barcelona in 2010, he became a persona non grata and had to leave town for Manchester City.

Balotelli has yet to really try anyone’s patience, although a lot was made of how Antonio Nocerino shouted “cool it” at him during Tuesday’s training session. Annoying though he sometimes might be, there’s an appreciation that deep down he’s still only a kid. “Balotelli makes me just as angry now with his jokes as he did when he was at Inter,” admits Thiago Motta, “but away from the pitch he’s a good lad.”

On it, however, things had not been going for him until the late cameo he made in the Ireland game. Against Spain, he felt aggrieved not to be awarded a penalty after a challenge from Gerard Piqué and twice punched the turf violently.

Then came another greater disappointment. Picking Sergio Ramos’s pocket, Balotelli found himself through on goal. Thinking he had all the time in the world, he showed no sense of urgency, allowing the Spain defender to get back and make a challenge. The chance was gone. Substituted shortly afterwards, Balotelli reproached himself on the bench as his replacement Antonio Di Natale scored with practically his first touch.

When Italy faced Croatia four days later, he didn’t exactly re-pay the faith shown in him by Prandelli, who decided amid calls to start with Di Natale, to keep him in the team. Balotelli underwhelmed, slightly annoying his coach by not carrying out his orders.

“I lost my voice shouting at him for 15 minutes and I didn’t manage to correct his position play,” Prandelli revealed. “If we love this lad, we have to tell him these things. He was dropping deep but didn’t have the ball. Either you drop deep and get the ball or you offer me an outlet up front deep inside their half.”

Facing criticism, Balotelli retreated within himself for a while. He has gradually got back to his old self after the Ireland goal, the brooding Balotelli has been replaced by his playful alter ego. Training resembled a schoolyard on Wednesday, as he broke out in a fit of giggles while provocatively holding a corner flag between his legs during a yoga session.

Balotelli’s ability to make people laugh and lighten the mood within a camp that has in the past perhaps taken things a little too seriously and allowed the pressure to mount is one of the reasons Prandelli has sought to include the likes of him, Cassano and Alessandro Diamanti in the squad. Their tomfoolery is tolerated on the condition that, come game day, they stop larking about and make the team win.

Everyone acknowledges how Balotelli is a unique talent. Some consider him to be more jazz musician than footballer – Italy’s Miles Davis on trumpet or John Coltrane on sax. However, for all his improv, Balotelli needs to learn to stick to the script more. Otherwise, he might find that his international career is as unfulfilled as that of Mancini.

Euro `88 was the only major tournament Mancini ever played as a protagonist for his country. He was called up for Italia `90 but didn’t feature once for reasons that were never satisfactorily explained. Lacking the trust of his coaches at international level, Mancini grew disillusioned. He walked away forever after Arrigo Sacchi substituted him during a friendly against Germany before USA `94 disregarding the understanding that if Roberto Baggio weren’t playing then he’d get a full 90 minutes.

Sacchi’s assistant Carlo Ancelotti tried to talk him out of it. Mancini was only 29 and at the peak of his powers. Alas it was no use.  “Thanks for your attempts but the national team is not for me,” Mancini replied. He retired with just 26 caps and nine goals to his name.

The fear is that the same fate awaits Balotelli. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Not all sons walk the same line as their football fathers. Unlike the case of Mancini, Balotelli does at least have an Italy coach who exhibits great confidence in him. Prandelli is expected to name him in his starting line up to face England in Sunday’s Euro 2012 quarter-final.

While undeniably rich in talent the question for Italy is, considering Balotelli’s temperament, can they afford to take the risk? As you’d expect, Mancini is in no doubt whatsoever. “Mario is a champion and champions help you win.”

© David Cannon /Getty Images

This article first appeared on FoxSoccer.com 

Puffs of fumata bianca or white smoke wisped through the summer’s blue sky in Rome. Yet the concave was not in session at the Vatican. There was no new Pope to select. Benedict XVI remains on the rock that is Saint Peter’s Basilica even if he is currently caught in a hard place, as the corvi scandal – so-called ‘crows’ leaking a series of sensitive documents alleging corruption and cronyism to the press – continues to cast a dark cloud over the Holy See.

No, the fumata bianca was instead seen across the Eternal city, emanating from a plush palazzo in a street off Piazza del Popolo where one of Italy’s most respected law firms is housed. It was there that Zdenek Zeman presumably pulled a packet of cigarettes out from a pocket – maybe he cadged one from AS Roma’s chain-smoking director of sport Walter Sabatini – then sparked a lighter and lit up. Inhale. Exhale. Fumata bianca.

The smoke signal curling its trail through the air led followers to the news that, after weeks of speculation, after all the dateci Zeman campaigns, he had picked up his cigarette only after he’d put down a pen to sign on the dotted line for Roma. The date of the announcement had a symbolism of its own too. June 4. It was 13 years to the day since the club had sacked him in quite extraordinary circumstances.

Zeman was first appointed by Roma in 1997 which was remarkable in itself. His previous job had been at rivals Lazio, who he’d led to second and third place finishes in Serie A. Things didn’t go so well in his third and final season with the Biancoceleste and he was fired midway through the campaign – only learning of owner Sergio Cragnotti’s decision through a group of journalists while at a coaching conference in Coverciano.

To begin with Zeman didn’t believe them. It was only after he’d heard from striker Beppe Signori, who insisted it were true, that he realized this was no joke. Embittered by the lack of respect Cragnotti had shown him, Zeman, out for revenge, vowed to win the Scudetto elsewhere. But when the phone rang one day and the caller said: “Buongiorno, it’s Franco Sensi, the president of Roma,” he thought it was a prank. Zeman responded: “Oh, yeah, and I’m Napoleon Bonaparte.” He hung up.

Sensi informed his then director of sport Giorgio Perinetti to try again. He dialed Zeman’s number and convinced him that, while it might sound far-fetched, Roma’s interest was in fact real and that the president wished to meet. Sensi had long admired him but he knew also that this appointment had great value as a coup de théâtre. Lazio supporters begrudged Cragnotti for getting rid of Zeman. Imagine how they would feel if they had to endure watching him lead Roma to the success that they craved.

As a publicity stunt, it lived up to much of its billing. Roma were soon able to boast that they were playing the most beautiful, free-spirited and entertaining football in Italy. They arguably hadn’t performed to such a high standard since the end of the Nils Liedholm era in the early `80s. While Zeman lost both derbies in his inaugural season, irritating some fans by saying it was “a game like all the others”, his team finished above Lazio in fourth place, their best league position for a decade as joint top scorers too.

And it was under Zeman’s guidance that Francesco Totti, then just 21, really began to realise his potential. The pair developed a special relationship that lasts to this day. No one has or perhaps ever will have more confidence in Totti than Zeman. He believes him to be one of the greatest footballers Italy has produced in the last 50 years along with Gianni Rivera and Roberto Baggio.

When asked more recently to name the three best players currently active in Serie A, he replied: “Totti, Totti, and Totti.” Throughout their time together at Roma, Zeman seldom referred to him by his Christian name or by his surname. To Zeman, Totti was simply stella or star. Playing on the left-hand side of an attacking trident with Abel Balbo in the centre and Marco Delvecchio on the right, he got into double figures for the first time in his career and won his first cap for Italy.

Excitement grew ahead of Zeman’s second campaign in charge. Season tickets were hard to come by and the Olimpico promised to be packed to the rafters every other Sunday. Still fresh in the memories of everyone who’d stood either in the Curva Sud or in the bars of Trastevere, Testaccio and Garbatella were the thrills that came with the 6-2 evisceration of Napoli, the 4-1 tearing apart of Fiorentina and the 5-0 humiliation of Milan that had made the highlight reel of his first year at the helm.

In addition to playing good football, Roma and Sensi in particular were enamoured with Zeman principally because he also appeared to stand for what was right. Much of the romanticism that surrounds him is down to the uncompromising vision he had of the game, refusing to play any other way than on the attack even when it would perhaps have been more opportune for his teams to tighten things up and make sure they got a result. This notion of purism was only enhanced by Zeman’s outspokenness on elements of Italian football that he felt needed cleaning up.

On August 13, 1998, he gave a sensational interview to L’Espresso, suggesting clubs were abusing prescription drugs. Zeman expressed surprise at the ‘muscular explosion’ of Juventus players. His comments caused a storm and led a crusading magistrate in Turin by the name of Raffaele Guaraniello to open an investigation. While Juventus as a club escaped punishment in 2004 with no evidence found to support the allegation that a direct order had come to administer banned substances, their doctor at the time was given a suspended jail sentence.

In the meantime, Zeman was made something of a martyr for his cause. Roma ended the `98-99 season in fifth place. They were again the league’s most prolific and thrilling side. Reservations were held, as always, about whether such a fast and loose, no half measures style – exemplified in the 5-4 defeat to Inter – would ever win any major honours, but then there were the memories of that great comeback from 3-1 down to draw 3-3 with Lazio and how about that 3-1 victory they’d enjoyed over their cugini towards the end of the championship too.

Even amid the personal attacks and the scrutiny that followed Zeman’s discussion with L’Espresso, his job appeared safe. Sensi was a kindred spirit after all. They seemed united in fighting the palazzo, the system of power believed to exist behind Italian football. But then the Roma president’s position suddenly shifted. From telling reporters “it has never crossed my mind to sack our coach” and blaming a “destabilizing press campaign” for the creation of uncertainty, Sensi’s claim that “Zeman will also train Roma next season” soon rang hollow.

There was a growing sense that Zeman was about to be betrayed by the person closest to him. Links with Fabio Capello began to emerge in the papers. Sensi had apparently grown fed up with Roma’s characterisation as ‘beautiful losers’. He wanted to win something. Changes were already being made to the coaching staff, as Sensi sought to bring in Vincenzo Pincolini and Piergiorgio Negrisolo. The writing was on the wall, but then again perhaps it had already been there for some time.

Word went round that Sensi’s decision to part with Zeman was to resolve a ‘political problem’. The palazzo had apparently spoken. “Someone has placed a veto on Zeman,” wrote Alessandro Capponi in La Repubblica. “Someone has said to Sensi: ‘either you sack Zeman or Roma will never win’. Is it possible?” Not to indulge conspiracy theories, but it’s certainly plausible considering what was learned after Calciopoli and the GEA trials in 2006. Zeman had become an inconvenience to the influential.

Sensi’s claim that “we are less the enemies of the palazzo with Capello” added to that impression, though it must also be said that Roma’s new coach hardly adhered to any supposed non-aggression pact. He too would initially show no fear in taking on the system. Disappointed at the turn of events, Zeman all but admitted that he had “followed president Sensi’s advice” to leave. “I am going abroad,” he said.

Zeman was exiled. His next job was in Turkey with Fenerbahçe. “They sent him to the Bosphorus on the edge of two continents to make him feel the fear of the precipice,” wrote the lyrical Tonino Cagnucci in Il Romanista. The great Roman crooner Antonello Venditti paid tribute to him in a song about his ‘conscience’. Zeman was out of sight but not out of mind. Expelling the coach was one thing. Banishing the idea of football he represented was another entirely, for “once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate.”

Nostalgia for Zeman has always been strong. Although he won’t appreciate the comparison, he has a Mourinho-esque ability to inspire the affection and loyalty of supporters at his former clubs. He can’t leave his home in the Fleming district of Rome between Ponte Milvio and via Flaminia without being approached by Romanisti and Laziali wanting to shake his hand and have their picture taken. It’s a rare achievement indeed to be loved on both sides of the capital’s footballing divide.

At the end of his first spell at Roma in 1999, Zeman said: “Perhaps one day I will return.” Many had lost hope that it would ever happen. A second coming was “quite close” in 2005. Then Sensi’s daughter, Rosella, was allegedly ‘persuaded’ not to appoint him. The marginalisation continued. Zeman was left high and dry. He’d resigned at Lecce where he’d brought through youngsters like Mirko Vucinic and Valeri Bojinov, and made the team second top scorers in Serie A. As it turned out, it was his last job in Italy’s top flight. Until now, that is.

After going back to third division Foggia two years ago, the club where he first established his reputation as a prophet in the provinces in the early `90s with a team including Signori, Gigi Di Biagio and Ciccio Baiano which is still considered one of the revelations of Italian football, Zeman worked yet another miracle this season by winning – yes, winning – Serie B with Pescara. Again, it was considered a work of art with brushstrokes provided by young apprentices like deep-lying playmaker and recent Italy call-up Marco Verratti, on loan Roma starlet Gianluca Caprari and strikers Ciro Immobile and Lorenzo Insigne.

Once Luis Enrique had declared his intention to leave Roma, citing ‘tiredness’, the clamor for Zeman to be named as his replacement got louder and louder, drowning out the candidacies of Vincenzo Montella and André Villas-Boas. Responding to reports that his decision had been swayed by popular opinion, Roma general manager Franco Baldini told reporters: “Zeman is neither a second nor a third choice. He is a choice. A year ago we offered him the role of being responsible for our youth set-up.”

In many respects, that between Baldini and Zeman is a meeting of minds. Baldini returned to Roma last summer six years after resigning from his post. Back then, he needed a break from football and spent some time out importing coffee instead. He had grown disillusioned and decried how “the best clubs in Italy have, in recent years, scientifically put together a system designed to keep them on top for as long as possible.”

Reassured that it has since been dismantled or at least checked, Baldini accepted a role with Roma’s new American owners in 2011 to outline a vision for the club. He brought in Enrique on the basis that he was “uncontaminated” by Italian football. After that, who better to turn to than Zeman, a likeminded individual known as il Boemo – the Bohemian – for his Czech roots and above all, his non-conformity.

Flag-bearers of calcio pulito and jogo bonito, their shared intents and purposes bode well for Roma. Enthusiasm is building ahead of the release of what is being called: ‘Zeman Part II: The Revenge’.  A banner was tied to the railings outside the Coliseum congratulating him on going with his heart and around 300 fans turned up at the club’s Trigoria training ground on Tuesday for his official unveiling.

What then might people expect from Zeman 2.0?

Continuity is to be found in the formation, a 4-3-3 but the modus operandi will be different from last season. Whereas Enrique’s football was based on slow, ponderous ball possession made up of horizontal passes, leading some to harshly quip that Roma might as well have been playing rugby, Zeman’s is quick, hard-running, lung-bursting and direct. “Every coach has their own ideas,” he said. “[Enrique] has his and they’re good. He focuses on ball possession. I don’t, as I have no patience. It’s a question of character, but I always want to get to the goal.”

Concerns persist at the other end. Roma let in 54 goals last season and there’s little to indicate that will improve under Zeman: His Pescara conceded 55. “To win you need defenders who are in defence, at least every now and again, not always in midfield above all if for instance, you’re in the lead,” wrote Giovanni Bianconi in Il Corriere della Sera.  “We hope that Zeman remembers this time.” Offering a response, Zeman countered: “It’s normal that every now again you risk something but when you score 90 goals [like Pescara did] it’s not important to see how many you let in.”

For all the bluster, there’s a need for realism. The obstacles Zeman once thought were blocking his path to success are more or less gone. If he fails it’ll be his own doing. Even so, it’s hard not to be taken in by the Roman-ticism that lies at the heart of this Roma. “I want to give the people emotions,” Zeman revealed. “I want them to come back to the stadium. In my time, the fans had fun and the stadium was full.”

The return of Zemanlandia to Rome is now finally upon us.

Bentornato Mister.

Roma 97-98 [4-3-3] Konsel: Cafu, Petruzzi, Aldair, Candela; Tommasi, Di Biagio, Di Francesco; Delvecchio [Paulo Sergio], Balbo, Totti

Roma 98-99 [4-3-3] Konsel: Cafu, Zago, Aldair, Candela; Tommasi, Di Biagio, Di Francesco; Paulo Sergio, Delvecchio, Totti

Roma 12-13 [4-3-3] ?

© Marco Luzzani /Getty Images

By finally accepting the overtures of Guangzhou Evergrande last week and flying to China to sign a contract worth a reported €10m a year until 2014, Marcello Lippi made his first steps back into coaching after a spectacular fall from grace.

A pair of starkly contrasting La Gazzetta dello Sport front-pages still serve as a reminder of how one of football’s greatest managers scaled the highest heights only to then come crashing back down to earth and touch rock bottom: Tutto Vero! Campioni del Mondo – All True! Champions of the World – in Germany in 2006 and Tutto Nero! Fuori la Peggior Italia di Sempre -All Black! Out the worst Italy of all-time – in South Africa in 2010.

Since then, rather than concentrate on what went wrong, such as his blind loyalty to an aging group of players, Lippi has often preferred to reflect on what might have been instead. To this day his biggest lament is not being able to play three-at-the-back in the build up to their title defence.

“I had something in mind for it, which is one of the reasons why I feel a great regret,” Lippi told Sky Italia. “I was doing the rounds. I went to Milan to speak to Alessandro Nesta. I went to Turin to speak to Giorgio Chiellini and Fabio Cannavaro because I’d got it into my head to go to the World Cup with a three-man defence. I liked the idea a lot.”

Yet unfortunately for Lippi circumstances out of his control meant it was wiped off the chalkboard. Nesta refused to come out of international retirement and Chiellini arrived at training camp in Sestriere with a calf strain, requiring two weeks of rehab. Plans to work together on the movement and positioning of the three-man defence with Cannavaro and the young Leonardo Bonucci in place of Nesta were now definitively consigned to history.

“When we got to the World Cup I couldn’t do something that I’d never tried. So I left things as they were,” Lippi explained.

More injuries compromised the existing set-up further. Andrea Pirlo was missing until after the group stages and Gigi Buffon was out of the tournament once it emerged he’d seriously tweaked his back during the warm up of their opening game with Paraguay. He played but limped off at half-time with Italy 1-0 down, adding to the sensation that they were already done for.

Whilst Italy managed to claw themselves back into proceedings and scrape a 1-1 draw with Paraguay, they were then held to the same scoreline by New Zealand and lost to Slovakia, finishing bottom of their group without a win to their name. Not since their defeat to Korea in 1966 had Italy been so humiliated.

Playing three-at-the-back certainly wouldn’t have been enough on its own to have saved Italy – their problems were varied – but if the opportunity had presented itself then it might have balanced the team better and helped spare their blushes.

Lippi’s intuition was good. Nesta apart, they had the personnel and the expertise to make the system work. “We had the wide-players to support this kind of play because they played that way for their clubs,” Lippi explained. “I am referring to Christian Maggio and Domenico Criscito.”

Over the past two years this train of thought has gathered yet more momentum in Italy. According to data collected by Opta and Who Scored 17 of its 20 clubs have used it at one stage or another this season and in all it has been deployed 216 times across the league. More can be read about the context and reasons behind its resurgence in an article I wrote for FourFourTwo here.

Aside from it already being the zeitgeist, the clamour for Italy to adopt a three-man defence has only grown following Juventus’s title-winning campaign in Serie A. It became a leitmotif of their unbeaten season from late November onwards when, after surprising many by lining his team up in a 3-5-2 to practically mirror Napoli, Antonio Conte applied it in successful alternation with a 4-3-3 depending of course on the opposition.

There’s a case to be made here for simply transferring their winning formula to the national team. Dino Zoff did something similar ahead of Euro 2000, copying elements of Fabio Capello’s Roma – the last team prior to Juventus to conquer the Scudetto with three-at-the-back in 2001. With it, he managed to reach the final where Italy lost to David Trezeguet’s last gasp goal, as France won in extra-time. It bears remembering that Vicente Del Bosque also incorporated much of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona to his Spain side and to a certain extent followed their recipe for success at the 2010 World Cup too.

In some respects imitation is no-brainer. The reality of international football is that coaches have little time to work with their players. If they do impose a style then the lapse in time between friendlies, qualifiers and major tournaments mean continuity is lost and chemistry hard to find, especially with players dropping in and out of the squad because of injury, suspension or a loss of form.

Italy manager Cesare Prandelli is more aware of this than most.

He fought hard to get a concession from Serie A’s club owners to make their players available for additional midweek training camps in-season. Initially they put their own interests above that of their country, citing Champions League and Coppa Italia commitments but an agreement was eventually reached and dates penciled in the diary for April 23 and 24 at Coverciano.  Tragedy then struck. The death of Livorno midfielder Piermario Morosini and the rescheduling that followed the postponement of the games from that weekend left no option but to cancel.

When a provisional Italy squad finally met up on Monday this week to begin “Operazione Europeo”  – three months after their last get together – not everyone could make it straightaway. Juventus and Napoli players were given time off after the weekend’s Coppa Italia final, so too were Torino’s Angelo Ogbonna and Pescara’s Marco Verratti following their part in earning automatic promotion to Serie A, not forgetting Salvatore Sirigu and Thiago Motta, both of whom were involved in the final day of Ligue 1 with Paris Saint-Germain. Preparation time is of the essence.

For what it’s worth, Italy have developed a very clear and modern tactical identity under Prandelli. He has sought to replace the tradition of defensive, counter-attacking, opportunistic football with an attractive possession oriented game based around a 4-3-1-2 and a ‘rotating midfield square’ in which players with piedi buoni interchange positions so as not to give their opponents any reference points. It has yielded positive results. Italy held Germany to a draw and beat Spain in friendlies while also qualifying comfortably for Euro 2012.

Since then there’s a sense that they have taken a step back. Consecutive 1-0 defeats to Uruguay last November and the USA in February have provoked concern even if, while the results were bad, the performances were on the whole quite good. Italy dominated possession [64% against Uruguay and 68% against the USA]. They out-shot and out-created their opponents yet ended another game goalless.

Italy haven’t found the back of the net in slightly more than three and a half hours and the fear is that, in the absence of Antonio Cassano and his strike partner Giuseppe Rossi, they resemble a kind of post-Pauleta Portugal: a team that produces a lot, is easy on the eye but doesn’t have a reliable forward at international level. That might change now Cassano has thankfully recovered from a stroke caused by a congenital heart defect. “He’s our top scorer and his numbers mean something,” Prandelli said. “He’s one of the few attacking players who knows how to read the movements of another striker well.”

Aping Juventus might not help Italy improve in the penalty area. Lest we forget they weren’t exactly reliant on any single individual for goals this season. Twenty different players got on the scoresheet and although Alessandro Matri was the only one of their forwards who made it into double figures he faded and lost his place towards the end of the season.

In theory a solution to that problem is to be found in Udinese striker Antonio Di Natale. Capocannoniere in Serie A in 2010 and 2011, he has scored 80 goals in 107 games either in a 3-5-2 or 3-5-1-1 and knows the system well. A broader discussion of Italy’s attacking options can be read here in a piece I wrote for the BBC. But for now, let’s focus on answering the question: will Prandelli seriously consider placing his own ideas to one side and follow the path laid out by another?

Asked about the 3-5-2 last week, he said: “We’ll try it, even if I’d like to keep an extra midfielder.” A couple of things were taken from that response. First, the 3-5-2 might be experimented with in training and upcoming friendlies against Luxembourg and Russia. Second, Prandelli is reluctant to play without a trequartista, which up until now has been a position that has featured in all of his 19 games in charge of Italy.

Reviewing it might be worthwhile. Aside from Cassano and Sebastian Giovinco, both of whom can and probably will play as a second striker, the other players tried in the role thusfar – such as Thiago Motta and Riccardo Montolivo – have been unconvincing and out of their comfort zones.

Bologna’s Alessandro Diamanti furnishes Prandelli with another No.10 to run the rule over but truth be told more effective performances have come in Serie A from incursori like Claudio Marchisio and Antonio Nocerino: players capable of breaking from midfield, timing runs into the box and scoring goals. Taken together they got on the scoresheet no fewer than 21 times for Juventus and AC Milan this season. Harnessing that threat to a team which of late has experienced difficulty making the net bulge would be expedient.

Although symbolic, dropping the trequartista wouldn’t necessarily represent a change in style and philosophy either. Conte’s Juventus see football in a very similar way to Prandelli’s Italy – they play the ball out from the back, impose themselves through possession and seek to put on a spectacle for their fans. There’d be no compromise or a contrast in schools of thought just compatibility and the opportunity to channel the winning mentality they have nurtured over the past season.

A block of seven Juventus players has been called up – goalkeeper Gigi Buffon, centre-backs Leonardo Bonucci, Andrea Barzagli and Giorgio Chiellini [the best defence in Serie A], then Pirlo, Marchisio and Emanuele Giaccherini. It further reinforces the club’s proud history as the principal supplier to the national team. There were nine Juventini at the 1934 and 1978 World Cups, another seven at Euro 2000, and six and five respectively at the 1982 and 2006 World Cups. A successful Juventus often means a successful Italy.

Prandelli is at least giving himself the option of playing their 3-5-2. Further to Maggio and Criscito, the wing-backs Lippi had available to him in 2010, the emergence and provisional inclusion of other wide players like Atalanta’s Ezequiel Schelotto and Giaccherini gives Italy width that they otherwise don’t have in a 4-3-1-2. If nothing else, it’s a great alternative for Prandelli to have at his disposal. The novelty factor of it might also be turned to Italy’s advantage at Euro 2012 where other nations perhaps won’t have confronted a team comparable in shape and tactical versatility.

“The will to surprise people must be even stronger than all the difficulties [Italy have faced in the last six months],” Prandelli told Il Corriere della Sera. “Without forgetting that it’s in the difficulties that you can also meet some pleasant surprises.”

With that in mind don’t be so shocked if Italy line up in a way different from what’s expected of them and follow the Juventus blueprint ahead of their appearance in Poland and Ukraine this summer.

Possible XI [3-5-2]: Buffon; Barzagli, Bonucci, Chiellini; Maggio, De Rossi, Pirlo, Marchisio, Criscito; Cassano, Di Natale

© Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images

When the nights began to pull in around San Vendemiano, Gino Del Piero couldn’t bring himself to call out to his son Alessandro and tell him that it was time to pick up his ball and come inside. Once darkness fell, he would instead open up the garage, turn on the light, get into his FIAT 127 and park it outside. A space was left for the boy to practice in until bedtime when he’d head up to the room he shared with his brother Stefano and go to sleep under a poster of Michel Platini.

Alessandro was encouraged to keep playing football for as long as he wanted. Decades later the enthusiasm he has for the game remains undiminished. It seems as though he still feels the same giddy excitement as the time he unwrapped a birthday present from his father and discovered a box containing his first ever football boots, a pair of classic Adidas Littbarskis.

The thought of retiring, even at 37 after winning everything there is to win, hasn’t seriously crossed his mind. “I will be the first one to know when I have to stop but not yet: my passion for the game is too alive,” Del Piero told Vanity Fair. “It’s not easy to say how long I have got left,” he added in L’Équipe. “If I think about the passion that I have for football, for my job, I would say 20 years.”

The travesty is that Del Piero will not be allowed to carry on and finish his career at Juventus, the club of his heart.

This has been known for some time now. On May 5, 2011, Del Piero declared he’d signed a one-year extension and that “it will be my last contract with this shirt.” Sitting by his side as he put pen to paper, president Andrea Agnelli confirmed: “It will be Del Piero’s last season at Juve.” The never-ending story had a final chapter. And yet few, not least Del Piero, were ready to put the book down. “The hope,” he insisted, “is to stay at Juventus for as long as possible.”

It wasn’t to be. At a shareholders’ assembly on a cold, grey afternoon in mid-October Agnelli reiterated rather abruptly without warning and little ceremony that, yes, this would in fact be Del Piero’s final year. There was a round of applause and that, it seemed, was that.

The news itself wasn’t a great shock. Agnelli in mitigation had his reasons for making an announcement on that occasion. But the sensation remained that it could and should have been handled better; that perhaps it would have been more appropriate to tie it in with the memorable opening of Juventus’s new stadium. Instead, it was mentioned amid a discussion about the club making a fresh capital injection after an “intolerable” financial loss, hardly the ideal moment to pay proper tribute to one of the most valuable players in its history. “It’s like breaking up with a lover of 20 years by text message,” wrote Luigi Garlando in La Gazzetta dello Sport.

Reported to have not taken it well, Del Piero was diplomatic when the satirical show Striscia la Notizia caught up with him a few days later to give him the Tapiro d’Oro. “Let’s say the president reminded me of my contract expiring early,” he mused. Keen not to make anything more out of it, Del Piero left it there until later in the season when he conceded that “[Agnelli] surprised me. But a captain must never forget his duties and what he represents.”

Recurrent not just among i delpieriani of Juventus’s support, but Italians in general, was the feeling that Del Piero deserved something more. He was very nearly the best thing the Old Lady never had.

“Before joining Padova at 13. I had a trial some months earlier to go and play in Turin… but at another club, Torino!” Del Piero told France Football. “At the time they probably had the best academy in Italy. But my mother was categorical: ‘You’re only 12. You’re too young and Turin is a long way away’.”

Once at Padova, legend has it that a Juventus scout famously came to watch one of his games. Unimpressed, he left a quarter of an hour from the end. Del Piero then scored twice. Destiny, it seemed, would have to intervene. And it did.

A teenage Del Piero signed at Juventus’s headquarters in Piazza Crimea. It was 1993. Reflecting on that time, the great former player Giampiero Boniperti, then club president, wrote in his book una vita a testa alta: “I immediately took him to see the trophies. ‘Have you seen how many we have won?’ I asked. ‘I hope that you can contribute to making Juventus even greater’.”

Del Piero did that and more.

By the age of 22, he had won everything there was to win at club level. As of last week, he could count six Scudetti [or a record-equaling eight - like Beppe Furino, Ciro Ferrara, Giovanni Ferrari and Virginio Rosetta  - if you include, as he does, the two revoked by Calciopoli] a Cadetto, a Coppa Italia, four Italian Super Cups, a Champions League, an Intercontinental Cup, the European Super Cup and of course the 2006 World Cup among his major honors.

Over time, he surpassed the immaculate Gaetano Scirea as Juventus’s all-time leader in appearances. He eclipsed Boniperti himself as the club’s top scorer in Serie A and also in absolute with 289 goals.

Kids up and down the peninsula, playing in the streets and squares of Turin, Milan, Rome and Naples, have attempted, while providing their own radio commentary, to score a gol alla Del Piero – emulating the looping cushioned volley with the outside of the foot against Fiorentina, the mazy dribbles from the wing before cutting inside the box and curling a shot into the top corner against Lazio and so many others, the pivot against River Plate, the backheel against Borussia Dortmund, the free-kick against Milan, the last gasp counter in added time of extra-time against Germany and the brace that earned a standing ovation from Real Madrid fans at the Bernabeu.

Wherever Juventus called home throughout his career, he left his mark, finding the net at the Stadio Communale, the Delle Alpi, the Olimpico and the eponymous Juventus Arena. Del Piero is the thread that binds them all together. He is living history and from him, there are many lessons to be learned.

Del Piero never showed anything but respect for Juventus. It bears remembering how, after he was presented with his first shirt in the introductory press conference following his transfer from Padova, he neatly and delicately folded the black and white jersey. He didn’t toss it to one side and leave it crumpled on the floor like other new signings. He valued it, as many would his loyalty.

Del Piero always stood by Juventus even amid the doping allegations, the Calciopoli scandal and relegation to Serie B. He didn’t walk out like some of the others or abandon ship like Schettino. He assumed responsibility and led them out of the darkness back into the light. None of the other “simboli per sempre” – Omar Sivori, Boniperti, Roberto Bettega, Michel Platini and Dino Zoff – had their devotion to the club tested to the same degree. None of them had a day like that in Rimini on September 9, 2006 when Juventus’s first ever season in Serie B began, their shirts stripped of a Scudetto that was remembered in a tricolor wristband.

For that service Juventus owe Del Piero a special gratitude. The club is what it is today in large part because of him. Separating one from the other in the collective imagination is an exercise in futility. They are indistinguishable. “Throughout the world Juventus is Del Piero,” opined former coach and mentor Marcello Lippi. “When you say his name it means Juve. I don’t know what happened between him and the club.”

Understanding the whys and wherefores is possible. Agnelli, with all due respect for Del Piero, regardless of the rather clumsy way he has shown it, is of the opinion that the player is the past not the future of the club. Del Piero still feels he has so much more to give, not on the bench, but from the start. A bit-part player for much of this season, left on the sidelines even when Juventus’s strikers were misfiring, Del Piero proved decisive when called upon, scoring in the Coppa Italia semi-final against Milan, the Derby d’Italia with Inter, and then at home to Lazio when his winner appeared to greatly shift the momentum in the title race back in favour of his team.

Knowing as much, for as competitive a soul as Del Piero’s, being out of the starting XI can’t have been easy.  He has called it “the most complicated [season] of my life because a reality was placed in front of me which I had never known: the reality of playing little or not at all.”

In an ideal world, Del Piero would start every remaining game of his career in a Juventus shirt. The inconvenient truth is that he has to contemplate playing elsewhere. “From June 30, I am out of contract,” Del Piero acknowledged. “I don’t know what to think about my future, it’s a huge change and it frightens me a little because it’ll be like leaving home for a second time. But I am living it as though it were one of the video games that I liked as a child, a new level to overcome.”

And so, Sunday’s game against Atalanta was Del Piero’s last in front of his home fans. As an occasion it will certainly live long in memory.  After the Turin born and bred academy graduate Luca Marrone put Juventus ahead, who else but Del Piero should double their lead and make all but sure that his club entered the history books as only the third team after Perugia in 1978-79 and Milan in 1991-92 to go an entire season unbeaten in Serie A.

Receiving the ball from Emanuele Giaccherini outside of the area, the Juventus No.10 lined up his sights, and pitched a wonderfully precise swinging shot into the corner. Like no other to my mind he has a habit of scoring goals that are charged with emotion and sentiment. It’s enough to think about the step-over and dink against Bari in 2001 just days after his father lost his battle to cancer and the flick against Piacenza shortly after l’Avvocato, the great Juventus patron, Gianni Agnelli past away in 2003.

This time each of his teammates gathered around him in a circle. They paused for a little while to share the moment and take it all in. There was an appreciation that this was the last time it would happen here in Turin.

If it hadn’t already sunk in, then Del Piero’s substitution in the 57^th minute brought it home. Seeing the fourth official hold up his board and Simone Pepe warming up to replace him, Del Piero stopped in his footsteps, raised his hands to the sky and waved to the stands, blowing kisses and taking a bow.

As he trudged off the pitch, the Atalanta players clapped and pat him on the back. A cry of “un Capitano, c’è solo un Capitano” rang out followed by “another year, Del Piero another year.” After embracing goalkeeper Gigi Buffon, he walked up the stairs to take his place in the dug out, stopping to sign the autograph of a young Juventino.

No sooner had he got sat down than the crowd beckoned him to stand again. Urged on by Mirko Vucinic and Claudio Marchisio, he stood up and accepted the applause, pumping his fist before embarking on an impromptu lap of honor as play continued around him. No one was watching the game. Once under the Curva, scarves and shirts were thrown, landing at Del Piero’s feet like roses tossed before an opera singer. “Grazie di Tutto,” went the next chant.

Back near the bench, Buffon, resting his head on his palm, looked on in wonder, shaking his head. “In the next 150 years there will not be anyone like Del Piero. I was moved,” he said afterwards. He wasn’t the only one. Cameras panned around the ground showing fans crying. Del Piero had to fight to keep his feelings inside too, pretending to tie his shoelaces “to hide my tears.” Saying goodbye is never easy.

Circuit completed, he descended into the dressing room at full-time, poignantly emerging last to walk the celebratory red carpet and lift the Scudetto trophy under a snowstorm of ticker tape. If he were ready to retire, then there could surely have been no better time than this given the club is back on top. But, as is abundantly clear from the title of his new book giochiamo ancora [Let’s Keep Playing], his intention is another. “I have a lifetime to be a director. I was born to play football, I am healthy and I want to continue to do so.”

Now all that remains is this weekend’s Coppa Italia final against Napoli. After that it’s into the unknown for the generations that have grown up with Del Piero: the prospect of a Juventus without him.

The closest he has ever previously come to wearing a shirt other than bianconero was at the end of his first season in Turin. It had been agreed that he’d be sent on loan to Parma. There was a meeting with their owner Calisto Tanzi, but the deal fell through after they signed Dino Baggio and felt their shopping was done. “If I’d changed jersey, everything might have taken a different path.”

Like a character in a Robert Frost poem he is now taking the one less travelled. “I’m a bit out of practice,” Del Piero claims. “I haven’t been on the market for 19 years.” He drew the comparison in his book with “entering Narnia.” But perhaps the real fairytale would have been for Del Piero to go through the wardrobe and find a way to finish his career at Juventus. Instead, we wish him a happy ending elsewhere.

Ciao Ale, Grazie di tutto.

© Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images

Goalkeeper

Gigi Buffon – Juventus

“If this wasn’t my best season then it wasn’t far off,” Buffon told Il Corriere della Sera. Entering the history books after conceding just 16 goals in Serie A, the Jventus No.1 sometimes had little to do, but when called upon, he jumped into action, producing stunning save after stunning save against Lazio and Palermo. His mistake in a 1-1 draw at home to Lecce was an eye-opener precisely because it was the only one he made all year.

Defenders

Thiago Silva – AC Milan

The turning point in Milan’s season perhaps wasn’t the Sulley Muntari ghost-goal against Juventus, but rather what happened four days later when Max Allegri risked an unfit Thiago Silva against Roma. He pulled up after 10 minutes, missed a Champions League quarter-final with Barcelona and the rest of the campaign. Without the best centre-back in the world and a key playmaker in their system boasting the highest pass completion rate in Serie A, Milan had to give up the throne.

Andrea Barzagli – Juventus

The renaissance man of the season. A member of Italy’s World Cup winning squad in 2006, Barzagli won the Bundesliga with Wolfsburg in 2009 but was almost forgotten back home. Signed by Juventus 18 months ago, he has become indispensable under Antonio Conte and with Thiago Silva was the stand-out centre-back in Serie A enjoying the highest rating among his peers in La Gazzetta dello Sport’s famous pagelle for much of the campaign.

Francesco Acerbi – Chievo

Rarely in the team, out of favour and disappointed not to leave in January, Acerbi was down on his luck at Chievo until the spring when he began to emerge as one of the most promising young defenders in Serie A. Highly regarded for his pace and power, the 23-year-old’s assured displays appear to have persuaded Milan that, while no one can fill the departing Alessandro Nesta’s boots, he is still a prospect worth investing in for the future.

Midfielders

Antonio Nocerino – AC Milan

“If Nocerino can play at the Camp Nou then so can I,” was the mocking refrain among sceptical Milan supporters in September. Wearing the No. 22 shirt, many thought he was unworthy of it until he scored a hat-trick against Parma, prompting the club’s chief executive Adriano Galliani to claim it was like seeing the jersey’s former owner Kaka again. Arguably the value for money signing of the season, his 10 goals from midfield is a Milan club record, bettering Romeo Benetti’s total of seven in 1973.

Andrea Pirlo – Juventus

Ask yourself if Juventus would have won their first Scudetto in nine years were it not for Pirlo? The answer is probably: ‘No’. Milan’s decision to allow him to leave for Juventus last summer came to define this season. Pirlo alone cannot account for the team’s 26-point improvement from seventh to first place in the space of a year, but the overwhelming sense is that he made the difference. “I believe signing a player of his level for free was the deal of the century,” said Gigi Buffon. “Watching him play, I thought: There is a God.”

Claudio Marchisio – Juventus

“I see myself in Marchisio,” claimed Marco Tardelli, the Juventus legend and hero of Italy’s 1982 World Cup triumph. Born and bred in Turin, brought up through the ranks at the club he supported as a boy, Marchisio realised his potential and his dream of winning a Scudetto. Juventus’s second top scorer with 9 goals in Serie A this season, he was as important if not more so in the job he did protecting Andrea Pirlo with the excellent Arturo Vidal and recovering the ball too. An all-rounder.

No. 10

Sebastian Giovinco – Parma

“It’s a shame the season has to end,” Giovinco told reporters on Sunday. They’re sentiments that are hardly surprising considering Parma won their last seven games in a row, a streak, which owes a lot to a player once held up as the heir to Alessandro Del Piero. A career high 15 goals, including one of the best this season, a sensational dipping half-volley against Siena, leaves the impression that this little big man is much more than a tricky gadget player.

Strikers

Antonio Di Natale – Udinese

Intimating he might retire at the end of this season, Udinese’s ability to absorb the loss of star players every year will be tested if Di Natale hangs up his boots. A third straight 20-goal plus season, accounting for 44% of his club’s total, went a long way to qualifying them for the Champions League two years running. Their 34-year-old captain and talisman is a player even they can’t replace.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic – AC Milan

For the first time since 2003, Zlatan Ibrahimovic is not a member of a league championship winning team. And yet from several points of view, this has arguably been his best season to date. Top scorer in Serie A with 28 goals, he is the first player ever to achieve that feat in Italy at two different clubs.

Mattia Destro – Siena

Rewarded with a place in the provisional 32-man Italy squad for Euro 2012, Mattia Destro has made his case to be considered the best young player in Serie A this season. The Siena striker scored 12 goals in his first campaign as a regular. No player under the age of 21 has found the net in the league so much since Roberto Bettega in 1971.

Coach

Antonio Conte

Looking beyond Conte would be folly. By ending an entire season unbeaten in Serie A, a feat achieved only twice before first by Perugia in 1978-79 and then Milan in 1991-92, he ensured a place in Italy’s football pantheon. And yet, so much good work has been done by other managers in the league this season. It would be wrong to overlook the job Francesco Guidolin has done in qualifying Udinese for the Champions League again despite the sales of Cristian Zapata, Gökhan Inler and Alexis Sanchez. Elsewhere, Parma finished the campaign in better form than anyone thanks to Roberto Donadoni concluding in eighth place. Yet perhaps the true revelation of the year were Catania under Vincenzo Montella, who for much of the season played some of the most pleasing and generally innovative football on the peninsula, threatening to break the 50-point barrier only for an indifferent end of the campaign to put paid to that aspiration.

Substitutes

[GK] Samir Handanovic – Udinese

[CB] Giorgio Chiellini – Juventus

[MID] Arturo Vidal – Juventus

[No.10] Alessandro Diamanti – Bologna

[ST] Edinson Cavani – Napoli

Honorable Mentions

[GK] Massimiliano Benassi – Lecce

[CB] Nicola Legrottaglie – Catania

[Mid] Francesco Lodi – Catania

[No 10] Luis Muriel -Lecce

[ST] Fabrizio Miccoli – Palermo

Last Saturday, an irritated Mario Balotelli had to be pulled away by Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany from his own teammate. He was irate that Aleksandar Kolarov refused to let him take a free-kick against Sunderland. The incident brought up grim memories.

Two-and-a-half years ago at Inter Milan, Balotelli had won a penalty against Palermo and felt he had the right to convert it. But Samuel Eto’o was the designated taker on the team and he placed the ball down on the spot ready to shoot. Balotell petulantly chose to stand in the way of his teammate’s run-up. Javier Zanetti then had to intervene and led the forward away by the wrist like a naughty schoolboy.

It’s tempting to draw the conclusion that he has learned nothing in that space of time. This will not come as a surprise to former coach José Mourinho. Recall, for instance, how he once said in reference to Balotelli that if someone works with players like Zanetti, Ivan Cordoba and Marco Materazzi and doesn’t learn anything, it’s because they have “only one brain cell.”

Yet City manager Roberto Mancini has always had greater faith in the youngster. He sees his own tempestuous self as a player in Balotelli. “Roberto keeps repeating: ‘When I went from Bologna to Sampdoria [as an 18-year-old], I already felt that I was better than everyone else. Then I understood that I had to work hard to improve’. I have taken it on board.”

Their relationship has been likened to that between a father and son, although Balotelli’s agent Mino Raiola has countered that it has more in common with that of a husband and wife.

If that’s the case, then perhaps they have never before been this close to divorce.

Mancini was arguably as hard on Balotelli as he’s ever been after City’s 3-3 draw with Sunderland, revealing that had Carlos Tévez not been lacking match fitness, then he would have made a change straight after kickoff, so disappointed was he in his protégé. “I was thinking [of substituting Balotelli] after five minutes,” he said. “Mario didn’t play well. In the game the strikers should be the difference but not just in the last few minutes – before then.”

This was certainly harsh. Balotelli had scored twice after all, the first an equalizing penalty on the stroke of halftime, the second a fine solo effort that got his side back into the match with five minutes to go. The focus, however, lay elsewhere. To The Sunday Times Balotelli was “City’s April Fool.”

While he should never have got into a petty squabble with Kolarov, in fairness to him, he’d already stood aside and watched as his teammate had two earlier free-kicks saved by Simon Mignolet. Maybe he was justified in thinking someone else should have a turn, especially considering that the set-piece in question was made for a right-footed player to curl in?

If that had been the only conflict Balotelli had got involved in that afternoon then, let’s be honest, the scrutiny he has since endured probably would have only been slightly less intense. It was not: reports emerged that he had apparently also clashed with another teammate, Yaya Touré, in the changing room. If true, it wouldn’t be the first time the pair have quarreled – they had a heated exchange after last month’s defeat by Swansea.

There’s another precedent for this from Balotelli’s time at Inter. In the first leg of their Champions League semifinal against Barcelona in 2010, he was brought on with 15 minutes remaining with orders to help the team protect their 3-1 lead. Balotelli gave the ball away a couple of times. He was whistled by his own fans and shouted at by Mourinho.

Come the final whistle, when everyone else was celebrating, he took off his shirt and disrespectfully tossed it to the ground before storming down the tunnel. Materazzi caught up with Balotelli and tore into him. So did Diego Milito and Cristian Chivu who, according to some accounts, even threw a boot. A stunned Zlatan Ibrahimovic, then at Barcelona, looked on in shock. “My teammates had never seen anything like it,” he said. “They had never seen a player lash out against a teammate like that, which is what Materazzi did… If it had happened to me, I would have put him on the floor in two seconds.”

As admirable as Ibrahimovic’s protectiveness was on witnessing the fracas, Balotelli had without any doubt gone too far. A couple of days later, La Gazzetta dello Sport’s front page bore a picture of him with the headline: “The End.” Similar things have been printed about Balotelli in the past week, indicating that City are fed up and will “cut him loose” in the summer.

History it seems is repeating itself.

As at Inter, there’s a sense that Balotelli risks compromising rather than complementing City’s ambitions at a delicate moment of their challenge for honors. He is seen as a distraction. Just as Inter could have done without Balotelli provocatively declaring his support for AC Milan, openly attending some of their games and letting himself be persuaded into pulling on their rival’s shirt on a satirical TV show during their treble-winning season, City have found some, though not all, of the antics that have endeared him to supporters unnecessary. They have created a circus.

The ringmaster must also shoulder his share of the blame. If unity is an issue at City, it’s partly by Mancini’s own making. By not holding Balotelli to the same standard of discipline as other players, by being too lenient on him and maybe too harsh on Tévez, he has created the conditions in which resentment might be harbored. That potential lack of togetherness could well be the difference in this season’s title race.

There have of course been other factors too, from the untimely absence of Kompany last month, David Silva’s exhaustion and Sergio Aguero’s freak reaction to a spray applied to his foot. But Balotelli is a convenient scapegoat. While still unable to completely rein in his own impulses, he has, on balance, made some significant leaps forward in many respects this season, scoring 17 times in 18 games, including that memorable brace in the Manchester derby.

As destructive as his behavior was on Saturday against Sunderland, both his goals could still prove to be the catalyst to overhaul United. That, however, seems distinctly unlikely after they extended their lead at the top of the Premier League to five points following a 2-0 win at Blackburn Rovers on Monday night. But with a maverick like Balotelli in the side anything is possible.

If City were to sell him in the summer, they might come to regret it. Just ask Inter president Massimo Moratti, who has frequently said: “I’d take him back tomorrow morning.” It seems clubs can’t live with or without Balotelli. But, as one of Manchester’s greatest bands, Joy Division, once sung, this love might tear City apart.

This article first appeared on Fox Soccer

Klaas-Jan Huntelaar made it home a little quicker than usual last Thursday night. His commute from Gelsenkirchen to Angerlo across Germany’s border with the Netherlands usually takes him about an hour. But this time when the Schalke striker stepped out of his car and looked at his watch, he realized he’d done it in closer to 45 minutes.

Huntelaar hadn’t intentionally floored it down the autobahn. He isn’t a speed freak jumping red lights as his old Ajax teammate Zlatan Ibrahimovic revealed himself to be in his biography. Huntelaar by contrast once drove a VW camper van to training at De Toekomst, a reminder of his childhood camping holidays with his family near Bitburg when he’d eat steak frites and maybe share a beer with his dad if he were lucky.

A leisurely ride along the scenic route seems to be more his kind of thing, not the fast and the furious. Yet on this occasion, Huntelaar was frustrated and, as he admitted in an interview with Bild, he didn’t calm down until he saw his kids. His mind had been on the road but it was elsewhere too. The events of a few hours earlier kept replaying in his head.

Schalke had lost the first leg of their Europa League quarter-final 4-2 at home to Athletic Bilbao. They had been 2-1 up by virtue of a brace from their old-stager Raúl. His second goal, a dipping volley angled into the corner from the edge of the penalty area, was worthy of winning any match. Except there was still half an hour to play and Bilbao weren’t done yet.

Fernando Llorente equalized, Óscar de Marcos punished a mistake from Schalke’s fourth choice `keeper Mathias Schober and then Iker Muniain delivered the coup de grâce on the counter-attack in added time to turn the tables on their hosts.

It was an especially hard defeat to swallow. Huntelaar thought he’d got his team back on level terms minutes before Muniain struck when he hit a fine volley of his own from outside the box. But unlike Raúl’s effort, his struck the woodwork. The chance was gone and so were Bilbao, as they went up the pitch and landed what many believe to be, even ahead of the second leg at San Mames, a definitive knock-out blow.

Whatever happens tomorrow night, Huntelaar shouldn’t reproach himself too much. To give the tabloid headline writers their due, he has, with few exceptions in the current campaign, been nothing short of “World Klaas.”

On Sunday, he again ensured Schalke got a meaningful result, converting a late penalty to snatch a 1-1 draw away to mid-table Hoffenheim. It meant his side pulled that little bit further away from fourth placed Borussia Mönchengladbach and makes qualification for next year’s Champions League look more and more like a formality.

What was more remarkable, however, was that as Huntelaar preserved his status as the Bundesliga’s joint top scorer with Bayern Munich’s Mario Goméz on 23 goals, this was also his 41st in 40 games in all competitions this season.

Only Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo can boast better strike-rates in Europe. If they didn’t make it all look so casual, breaking one record after another with consummate effortlessness, then maybe Huntelaar’s achievements would be seen for what they are: extraordinary by any normal yardstick.

He is approaching Schalke’s best ever single-season scoring total in the Bundesliga, an honor held by the great Klaus Fischer, who while also making stunning bicycle kicks his trademark, found the net 29 times for the club in the 1975-76 season. “He has my blessing,” Fischer told Die Welt. “If he stays in good form and scores a lot more goals, Schalke will definitely be in the Champions League. This is what’s important for the club, not my record.”

Huntelaar has rediscovered himself at Schalke. Before relocating to Gelsenkirchen 18 months ago, he’d lost his way. Half a season at Real Madrid was complicated by joining the club mid-term. He was ineligible to play in the Champions League after featuring in the UEFA Cup with Ajax, an oversight for which his new employers were culpable, and to make matters worse there was regime change later that summer. Florentino Pérez replaced Ramon Calderon as the club’s president and Huntelaar didn’t figure in his plans.

He was sold to AC Milan, but found himself marginalized again, citing “politics” for his lack of playing time. Fan favorite Pippo Inzaghi was still in favor, Marco Borriello was playing himself into the Italy squad and Alexandre Pato was the darling of Leonardo, a coach with whom Huntelaar had little chemistry, partly because he was often played out of position out-wide. While there was the distinct possibility things might work out differently under new boss Max Allegri the following season, the signing of Zlatan Ibrahimovic put paid to that and he joined Schalke for £12.3m.

He has no regrets. Huntelaar got his “revenge” over Leonardo when Schalke eliminated Inter from the Champions League this time last year. But that aside, he believes his experiences in Spain and in particular Italy made him stronger physically and mentally. The 28-year-old added things to his game and rejects the notion that he is nothing more than a fox in the box, even though according to the stats provided by Opta-backed think-tank Who Scored, all of Huntelaar’s goals in the Bundesliga this season, the four left-footers and 13 right-footers, the six headers and other half a dozen penalties, have come in the penalty area. “I like to be a ball-playing forward,” he claims. “I like to move. I work a lot for the team.”

Exhibit One in this case is his part in a wonderful move against Stuttgart a couple of months ago, when Julian Draxler exchanged a one-two with Raúl then another with Huntelaar. The combination unlocked their opponent’s defence and Schalke scored one of the best team goals of the season.

Convincing Netherlands coach Bert van Marwijk that he should start ahead of Robin van Persie on that basis will not be easy. Huntelaar was the most prolific player in qualifying for Euro 2012 and is only 10 international goals away from overtaking Patrick Kluivert as his country’s all-time top scorer. It’s odd isn’t it how this might actually count against Huntelaar.

Goalscoring on its own has never been considered enough to deserve the status of a great player in Holland. The prolific are not always proficient when seen through Dutch eyes. To find their place in football’s pantheon, a striker must be technical and tactical, like Marco van Basten or Dennis Bergkamp. He can’t be the brainless bull at the gate. He must achieve something by thinking.

If that sounds picky, then spare a thought for Ruud Geels. The strawberry blonde centre-forward was the Eredivisie top scorer on a record five occasions and ended his career with 266 goals after playing for Feyenoord, Ajax and PSV Eindhoven, a total greater than that achieved by Johan Cruyff and only bettered by Willy van der Kuijlen.

He was a superb header of the ball and his astonishing leap in Ajax’s 6-0 thrashing of Feyenoord back in 1975 is something to behold. But Geels was a specialist and in that sense his critics thought of his game as limited. “He was a great goalscorer, but nothing more,” recalled teammate Jan Mulder. “He had no passing, no dribbling. In the game, he didn’t do much.”

Holding the same opinion of Huntelaar is harsh to say the least and if the Netherlands aren’t prepared to guarantee him a starting place in their team then Schalke certainly are for the foreseeable future. A new contract proposal said to be worth £6.5m a season is a mark of their respect for Huntelaar and shows how much the club wants to keep him beyond his current deal, which is due to expire in 2013. Raúl is even expected to either be forsaken or to take a big pay cut when his agreement comes up for renewal in the summer, as Schalke look to make Huntelaar an offer he can’t refuse.

By now alerted to a clause in his existing paperwork which would allow him to leave the club if an offer in excess of €20m is received, there are no shortage of parties interested in luring Huntelaar away from the Veltins Arena. He is weighing up his options. “There will be time to gather my thoughts after the season,” Huntelaar said. “Before then, I want to focus on scoring goals and not let myself be distracted at the European Championship.”

Schalke have a good hand in this poker game. There’s the prospect of Champions League football at a club where he is the star. Any success they have will be his and that’s an important factor. “If I were to win [on a team’s bench], I wouldn’t feel involved, therefore I wouldn’t feel like I’d actually won anything,” he told La Gazzetta dello Sport last November.

Asked about reported interest from Manchester United, Huntelaar replied: “I have heard about it, but no one has called and it’s not me they have to talk to. United are a fantastic club with a fantastic striker, Rooney, one of the best. But if I had to go there and repeat the Milan situation, thanks, but I’d prefer to stay where I am, where I have been made happy.”

Mindful not to make another wrong career choice, Huntelaar knows he is onto a good thing at Schalke. He can live in the family village back in the Netherlands and still play for the club. “I believe that the well-being factor will play a role in his decision and he is very close to his Dutch home here with Schalke,” club president Clemens Tonnies told Sport1 TV.

Huntelaar can feather his nest or flee it again. It’s up to him. Whether his stay at Schalke is temporary or permanent, one thing’s for sure: he has been a Klaas act.

This article first appeared on The Score

If Andrea Stramaccioni was still in need of a reminder that Inter have a reputation as a club for whom craziness is nothing out of the ordinary then seeing Mario Balotelli gatecrash his first press conference as their new manager on Tuesday afternoon left him under no further illusion.

On returning to his seat after shaking the former Inter striker’s hand, he expressed surprise, made a little joke and gave a shrug. Stramaccioni was unfazed. He has done his best throughout his life to be prepared for anything.

Reflecting on his sudden promotion from his position as coach of Inter’s principal youth team, the Primavera, Stramaccioni struck the right balance between having confidence in his own abilities and conveying humility at receiving the chance to take charge of a club that until the end of last year were the reigning world champions.

Asked if he felt like this was his destiny, Stramaccioni replied: “More than anything I’d say I feel lucky.” He spoke of watching and admiring the first team from “the other side of the bushes” at Inter’s training ground. It evokes the image of a curious kid spying on the grown ups. To put that into some perspective, Javier Zanetti is his senior by nearly two and a half years.

Yet don’t labour under the misapprehension that the young Stramaccioni is wet behind the ears. He feels ready for this job. “I am not afraid,” he insisted. “I don’t even feel like I am running the risk of being burned by it. Coaching Inter, for whoever does my job, is a dream. I have been asked to bring back enthusiasm and get my ideas across. I only have one certainty and that’s my work. I believe in it.”

The self-assurance he exudes is just one of the reasons why he has inevitably been dubbed Stra-Mou-ccioni or The Stramacci-One. On the one hand, the nametag represents nostalgia for José Mourinho. His shadow continues to loom large over the club. It came as no surprise on Tuesday night when Mourinho broke his recent press silence after Real Madrid’s 3-0 win against APOEL in the Champions League, that he chose not to talk about his current team but to maintain his personality cult at Inter by suggesting, as he always does with his former clubs, that “one day I will return.”

Stramaccioni knows exactly what game Mourinho is playing not least because he played it himself during his official unveiling by presenting the image that he is close to the fans. “I watched Inter play Marseille from the Curva,” he revealed.  “The passion impressed me. Seeing the supporters cry touched me deeply.” A shared understanding of the power of communication aside, it will ultimately be facts not words that substantiate the comparisons between Stramaccioni and Mourinho.

He is without question one of Italy’s brightest coaching prospects. In his column for La Gazzetta dello Sport, Arrigo Sacchi likened the hiring of Stramaccioni to when “Joan Laporta entrusted Barcelona to Pep Guardiola” drawing the parallel that they both had great success with their clubs’ youth teams. Such an opinion from one of the most respected and influential tacticians of all-time carries weight. So what’s the story behind Stramaccioni’s rise to prominence?

Born in Rome to a well-to-do family, his background isn’t typical of most footballers. Stramaccioni’s father is an architect and his mother an Italian and Latin teacher. That’s not unimportant. Structure. Composition. They’re all things that come in handy when it comes to coaching. As a boy, Stramaccioni showed promise as a centre-back at local side Romulea. He was thought of as among the best in the capital and went on to represent it in a regional championship, playing on the same team as Alessandro Nesta, Francesco Totti and Marco Di Vaio.

Recognising his potential, Bologna drafted Stramaccioni into their academy, but a knee injury suffered while playing for their Under-20s, which was made worse by one of his surgeries, brought a premature end to his playing career. Stramaccioni went to law school instead, writing his thesis on the Bosman and Calciopoli rulings, before trying his hand at coaching.

Everything he touched turned to gold. Stramaccioni led the Zeta Sport Under-16s to a national title and the Romulea Under-14s to a couple of regional championships. One of his former players, Umberto Improta, recalled to Il Corriere dello Sport what it was like working under him. “Strama knew how to transmit this extraordinary motivational charge. There were newspaper articles on the walls. Chalkboards with tactics on them. We thought that this was what it was like in the professional game, not among the amateurs.”

His achievements didn’t go unnoticed. Stramaccioni received a phone call from Bruno Conti, the head of Roma’s academy and was offered a job at his hometown club. He didn’t disappoint. Stramaccioni won the equivalent of the Scudetto with the Under-14s in 2007 and the Under-16s in 2010.  Again, his eye for detail and painstaking preparation marked him out as a cut above the rest. La Repubblica related an anecdote from the coach of Bari’s Under-16s who was shocked to discover that his team had been secretly filmed by one of Stramaccioni’s assistants. No wonder one of their set-pieces, which had caused all sorts of havoc against everyone else in the division, had been figured out by Stramaccioni’s Roma.

Conti planned to offer him the Primavera bench, but politically it was impossible. It’s current incumbent, Daniele De Rossi’s father Alberto, could not be asked to step aside for the obvious reason that it would cause a problem between the club and one of it’s best players. The time had come for Stramaccioni to move on and there was no shortage of takers. Inter went above and beyond to lure him to Appiano Gentile as a replacement for Fulvio Pea and he has more than lived up to expectation.

Last weekend, Stramaccioni looked on as Inter’s Under-20s overcame Ajax in a penalty shoot-out to win the inaugural NextGen series, a competition that aspires to be the Champions League of youth football. He had been up until late the night before watching tape of their penalty takers with the team’s goalkeeper Raffaele Di Gennaro. As usual, his meticulousness paid off. In attendance at the final in London was Inter’s president Massimo Moratti. What he saw caught his imagination. Could Stramaccioni be the answer to their first team’s problems? Who better to oversee the rejuvenation of an aging squad than the man responsible for getting stars of the future like Lorenzo Crisetig, Daniel Bessa and Samuele Longo to fulfil their potential?

There was a buzz about Stramaccioni. It was a marked contrast to the malaise over on the other side of the bushes. Sunday’s 2-0 defeat to Juventus, the 10^th of Claudio Ranieri’s spell in charge of Inter, added to the depression. But it wasn’t necessarily curtains for him. For an hour or so, Inter had, relatively speaking, played their best football under his tenure. Door-stepped outside his offices on Monday afternoon, Moratti was pressed on whether Ranieri would keep his job until the end of the season. “I think so,” he said.

Five hours later, a statement was released. Moratti, impulsive as ever, had changed his mind. Stramaccioni was to become his third manager this season and his fifth since Mourinho left after winning the treble in 2010.  When Milan play Inter in May, their boss Max Allegri will have faced a different coach in each of the five derbies he has participated in these past two seasons. It’s a damning indictment. Nothing has changed at Inter, except the managers of course, which tells its own story, namely that the problem lies not with the tacticians, but elsewhere, in particular with the players and the board.

Which begs the question: Can Stramaccioni realistically triumph where his predecessors have failed? There’s a lot to admire in his appointment. It does indicate that Inter are perhaps genuinely serious about heading in a new direction. By handing the reins to Stramaccioni, who Moratti for now insists is not a caretaker, Inter appear to be thinking long-term. But since when has that ever been in their vocabulary?

Moratti gave a very revealing insight into his outlook on football only a couple of weeks ago when he said: “A sensible idea might be to start thinking about the future not in immediate terms and build an essentially young team. The problem is that if after three games everything doesn’t go well you start to regret it.”

Starting with Genoa this weekend Stramaccioni has nine matches to convince Moratti to trust in youth. It might be the beginning of a new cycle for Inter. Then again, it could also be Groundhog Day.

This article first appeared on ESPN.com

Reflecting on his first season in England ahead of last year’s FA Cup final, Manchester City playmaker David Silva felt that their opponent that day epitomized the cultural differences he had experienced since leaving Valencia and La Liga more than any other. “There isn’t a Spanish Stoke,” he told The Guardian.

The tallest team in the Premier League didn’t daunt one of its smallest players. Bear in mind that Silva, at least according to his former coach Luis Aragonés, is in possession of some the “biggest balls” in the game. There’s little obvious machismo to his style of play, but as Stoke were to find out, he proved a constant thorn in their side at Wembley, conjuring and squandering a number of chances before involving himself in the build up to Yaya Touré’s winning goal, which ended a 35-year wait for a major trophy.

Mindful as all teams now are of Silva’s ability to seriously hurt opponents with his artistry rather than any uncharacteristic aggression, Stoke laid it on thicker than they have in previous encounters when the City No.21 visited the Britannia Stadium again last Saturday.  Contesting a header, he received an elbow to the side of the head from Dean Whitehead. A gash opened up and he required a head bandage to control the bleeding.

It left Silva looking like an `80s tennis star, except that the animated John McEnroe role was taken by a less than happy Roberto Mancini protesting on the sidelines to the fourth official about referee Howard Webb’s apparent willingness to persist with the “anything goes” line he used in the 2010 World Cup final when, coincidentally, one of City’s players Nigel de Jong kung-fu kicked Xabi Alonso and got off lightly.

Silva stayed cool, as Björn Borg probably would have done, but between one master on grass and another, the City midfielder couldn’t find a way to win and was hauled off by his manager after 62 minutes. A slight dip in his performances levels has been noticeable in recent weeks. Silva can be excused considering the exceptionally high standards he has set for himself throughout this season. He is a worthy candidate for Footballer of the Year and will certainly rival Arsenal striker Robin van Persie for votes.

But of late the conductor of City’s orchestra hasn’t been on song and, like against Chelsea, for instance, Samir Nasri has had to pick up the baton. Silva has made more assists than any other player in the Premier League this season, but he hasn’t set up another for one of his teammates in seven league games.

It would of course be wide of the mark to associate City’s stumbles exclusively to Silva’s ever so slightly faltering form.  This must be seen in a wider context that takes into account, for example, how Manchester United have really hit their stride. Then there’s the inopportune timing of Vincent Kompany’s injury, the exhaustion of players like Sergio Agüero as well as the difficulties that Mario Balotelli and Edin Dzeko have had in finding the net away from home on a regular basis since the beginning of the New Year, which led Mancini to swallow his pride and reintegrate the outlawed Carlos Tevéz.

This title race is as relentless as that of the 2008-09 season. There’s absolutely no let off from the mental and physical pressure, and that can take a toll. It’s quite understandable that Silva is suffering from some fatigue.

Aside from goalkeeper Joe Hart, no one has played more minutes for City this season.  He is pushing through the pain barrier too, coping with a left ankle complaint. “This ankle,” Silva told The Daily Telegraph earlier this month, “it is something that I have had problems with for years and years. Every day, I have to look after it. It’s not 100 per cent, but I just have to look after it. Playing all these games in England is hard, so it is impossible, totally impossible, to be completely 100 per cent all the time.”

City are managing Silva with care. He has been substituted in each of their last four matches to protect his fitness, but there have, in some cases, also been tactical reasons for his withdrawals.

Typically Silva starts either on the right or the left-hand side. He then comes into the centre of the pitch, as either of City’s full-backs overlap to stretch the opposition defence out-wide. This creates gaps in the middle that he can exploit with his passing. But, as Stoke showed on Saturday, there’s success to be had in leaving City’s full-backs to cross. They’re not wingers and their delivery isn’t great.

Rather than leave their starting positions to go out and meet City’s full-backs, Stoke were much happier to defend narrow and keep tight. All the holes Silva usually plays through were blocked. It was a good tactic because Stoke made City attack in a way that played to their strengths in defence.

It’s funny isn’t it how earlier this season, Mancini was seen to be lacking a deep-lying playmaker. He appeared to address that by signing David Pizarro in the January transfer window, though the midfielder, who is on loan from Roma, has been used less frequently than anticipated. Now, in light of what happened at Stoke, it’s a natural winger that City apparently need. Silva was replaced by Adam Johnson at the weekend. He might become more of a protagonist in the weeks to come precisely for that reason.

Yet it won’t be at Silva’s expense. Mancini may simply reconsider starting Nasri and Silva together on either flank. Their inclination to drift inside leaves City with little width. Saturday’s game against Sunderland, when City’s chances of staying perfect at home will be bolstered by the expected returns of Kompany and Joleon Lescott, will also be Mancini’s next opportunity to answer this question. Relatively speaking, it’s a nice one to be posed.

But come April 30, he will want Silva to be back to his brilliant best. It was against United that he arguably gave his finest performance in a City shirt. A repeat of that display, should his side still be in the title race, might well put the Silva in Silverware.

This article first appeared on Fox Soccer

Robert Prosinečki did a hop, skip and a jump. He hugged a member of his coaching staff then turned back towards the field of play and raised a celebratory fist in the air. Once the elation subsided, he pulled at the lapels of his suit jacket, took in a deep breath and hoisted his trousers up a bit as though to compose himself. Try as he might, Prosinečki couldn’t keep the emotion in and incited the crowd once more.

A few moments earlier Red Star striker Filip Kasalica had been put through on goal. This was a chance for individual glory in the Belgrade derby. Challenged by Partizan defender Nemanja Rnić, he stayed strong and held his ground, but by now the ball was getting away from him. Just as it seemed to be out of reach, he slid and prodded a shot between onrushing goalkeeper Vladimir Stojković’s legs. It rolled into the corner of the net.

Kasalica promptly vaulted the advertising hoardings and ran, arms-outstretched, towards the hardcore support at the Marakana. He had already announced himself to them on March 14 by scoring the fastest debut goal in Red Star’s history a minute and 13 seconds after coming on against Smederevo. Yet the meaning attached to a match-winning strike in a fixture of this intensity will inevitably bring endearment beyond his wildest imagination.

There was still a quarter of an hour remaining in the first leg of Serbia’s Lav Cup semi-final, but at 2-0, Red Star had broken Partizan’s resolve. They’d been on the ropes at times, legs wobbling, and were fortunate that each of their sucker punches landed. Both goals were opportunistic. Luka Milunović’s opener, a dinked finish over Stojković’s shoulder inside the 20^th minute, came when another youthful Luka, this time carrying the surname of Milivojević, slotted his teammate through after capitalising on a costly defensive mistake.

This was the game’s narrative arc. Whereas Red Star left nothing unpunished, Partizan spared their rivals. Lamine Diarra hit the post and Saša Illić fluffed his lines when faced with a one-on-one, skewing an effort wide. Better finishing might have left the visitors with fewer regrets. Instead, by letting Red Star off the hook, there is a burgeoning sense that this is the latest sign that the momentum might just be gradually swinging away from Partizan.

If anyone had suggested as much back in December, they’d have been open to ridicule. Set on what looked like an unstoppable course for a record fifth straight league title, Partizan were 10 points clear at the winter break.  But a fall out that started after their early exit from the Europa League back in August at the hands of Shamrock Rovers has threatened to derail their campaign.

Left seething at their elimination, president Dragan Đjurić refused to let the issue go. He repeatedly criticised Partizan’s coach Aleksandar Stanojevic and Mladen Krstajić, last season’s captain, who had been installed as the club’s director of sport at the beginning of the season. When a run of 13 consecutive wins didn’t appease him, a sick and tired Krstajić decided it was time to hit back. He was fired for his trouble. Stanojevic then resigned in protest.

Considering the size of Partizan’s lead at the top of Serbia’s SuperLiga, there was little reason to panic. They were ‘untouchable’. Whoever came in would merely have to pick up where Stanojevic left off and follow the script that he had laid out. How hard could it be? No one could possibly stuff this up, could they? So confident were Partizan that this was the case, they even dared to appoint the hapless Avram Grant as Stanojevic’s successor.

It didn’t take long for things to turn ugly: back-to-back draws in his first two games against struggling Novi Pazar and mid-table Sloboda Point Sevojno brought dissent from the Partizan crowd. Grant was pelted with lighters. He won the next two, but defeat to Red Star in the derby left him under more pressure. He seemed indifferent to it all. “I cannot make him show emotions, he’s just that kind of guy,” Đjurić said. “If it was up to me, I’d be emotional even if Partizan were playing cricket.”

While Grant remains on a sticky wicket, Prosinečki is all of a sudden bowling everyone over. In the last month, Red Star have won six games in a row and have reduced the gap at the top to six-points. There’s an outside chance of reclaiming the league championship, a feat they haven’t achieved since 2007. No longer also-rans, Red Star are at least headed in the right direction and that owes a lot to a courageous decision Prosinečki took in the winter.

A year into the job and frustrated at a lack of progress, he tore up his original plans and started again. He placed 11 players on the transfer list. “We need to inject fresh blood into the club at once by adding young talents from Red Star’s academy,” Prosinečki said. “They are the club’s future and I am convinced that’s the only way of looking at things because signing players who become surplus to requirements after six months is not the best policy.”

Red Star promoted their kids and reinvested the £2.5m they recouped from player sales in yet more blossoming talent. It was thought that such a strategy would not yield instant results. Everyone needed to have faith and be patient. “Building a team capable of giving our fans something to cheer about will take time and we can only think of domestic silverware again in a few years,” Prosinečki concluded.   Instead, beyond all expectation, they’re already in contention for honours.

Enthusiasm. Exuberance. The benefits associated with youth have reinvigorated Red Star. Milunović, in particular, has caught the eye. A free transfer from Zulte Waregem in Belgium, the 19-year-old Serbia Under-21 striker has scored three times in his first four games for his new club. Like fellow new signing Kasalica, one of five derby debutants last week, his goal against Partizan has been taken as a signal of intent, perhaps even the portent of a new dawn.

But forget talk of Red Star bringing through a generation capable of winning the European Cup again, as Prosinečki famously did in 1991. He admits that a repeat of that achievement is impossible today. “When I think about the players of that time, I am convinced that victory was inevitable,” he said. “Boban, Jarni, Mijatović, Suker… The Yugoslav league was among the top five in Europe. A revival would be difficult. Yugoslavia had a population of 24 million and the players weren’t allowed to leave before they were 28. Today the best players leave at 17. Red Star, Partizan and Dinamo Zagreb live on this, on talents. Maybe a team can emerge, but it’d only last a year.”

For now, that’s what Prosinečki is aiming towards. If he were to win something this season, then the chain-smoking former playmaker could at least afford to put down his Marlboros and light a cigar instead. There’s a lot of smoke at Red Star and perhaps this team is about to come alight too.