Posts Tagged ‘Otto Rehhagel’

Greece 1-1 Italy: Toni Wakes Up, Lippi Makes it 31 (International Friendly)

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

The big story of Wednesday night’s Greece vs. Italy friendly, which let’s face it had the “boring” stamp written all over it before it even started (especially with Inter vs. Juventus coming up this week-end), is that Marcello Lippi is now officially the best Azzurri coach ever. Sure, winning the 2006 World Cup helped in that sense, but Lippi is now also the manager with the longest streak of games without a loss. Better than Vittorio Pozzo (of 1934 and 1938 World Cup-winning fame) who raked in 30 positive matches, good old Marcello is now leading at 31.

Another good piece of news from Greece? Luca Toni has finally ended his Azzurri goalscoring drought!! His beautiful header Wednesday (receiving a good De Rossi set-piece delivery) put an end to over (believe it or not) 700 minutes of goalless playing time. About time too!

Aside from that, the Italian team didn’t shine a whole lot with their performance. It was nice seeing Camoranesi back to full fitness (the winger even came close to scoring), and while all eyes were pointed towards Giuseppe Rossi (in the starting line-up for the first time), the Villarreal striker didn’t raise too many “oohs” and “aahs” from the crowd. One good scoring chance, and a disciplined game otherwise.

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