Revealed: Italy s crushing defeat was "no Ronaldo"

Sports Weekly All-Media Reporter Wang Qinbo

Let's say a simple and stupid thing: Italy's defeat was because there was no Ronaldo.

Regarding the lineup of the Italian national team and the issue of the Italian team's talent gap, hundreds of words can be omitted here. However, there are two details about the Italian team's coach selection that cannot be omitted:

First, the Football Association inexplicably determined the route of members of the 2006 world championship team as a priority option, although 06 members have been considered a failed generation as coaches. Moreover, if you have to choose among this generation, Girardino, Grosso, Da Inzagi and others who are the most capable of coaching are not candidates. The first popular is Gattuso, who is down and out everywhere.

Secondly, foreign coaches are on the Italian coach's list for the first time. This is a question that would not be discussed in the past years, but is now described by some media as "a dream of many people" (really?). There is only one person on the shortlist of foreign coaches: Mourinho.

Everything is already very clear here: Gattuso and Mourinho are both coaches of the deep agent Mendes. Their relationship also goes beyond the usual agent-coach relationship. If Mourinho and Mendes were considered to be supporting each other back then, Gattuso decided to be the boss in the circle and did not hesitate to use his career to make trouble everywhere.

Mendes is "layout" for his 2026 World Cup. His earliest goal was to be the coach of the Portuguese national team. The media started to cooperate and expose the news two months ago, saying that the Portuguese Football Association was dissatisfied with Martinez and believed that Mourinho was the candidate who had the hope of leading the Portuguese national team to win the 2026 World Cup. He had planned to replace Martinez after the 2025 European League Finals. As for the rumored huge liquidated damages in Turkey, it has never been a problem for Mendes. He only needs to provide a successor to the Turks.

Theoretically, it is not difficult for Mendes to manipulate the performance of the Portuguese national team, and his players account for a huge proportion of Martinez's national team. However, in Portuguese football, there is one person that Mendes can't handle, his former chief client: Ronaldo.

Royce likes Martinez. Since Martinez coached, Ronaldo's number of goals in the Portuguese national team has increased by 20. He is very happy to work hard for the coach's tactics. He is still 40 years old and still robs the opponent's central defender who makes the ball in the game. His sense of honor and appeal also ensured that no one in the Portuguese locker room fought for the self-interest of the agent and Mourinho's ambitions, and he ensured that football was still just football, and football was chasing victory and honor. Portugal won the UEFA Champions League, which not only allowed Ronaldo to have three national team competition trophys, but also made Martinez's coaching position disappear from then on.

Ranieri is carrying the criticism from Italy across the country, and at this moment only the Roman fans support him completely. Saki yelled emptyly, "No one can refuse the national team", but the fact is that Ranieri never rejected the Italian national team, and he was even more happy to get the invitation. The problem is only one - when Ranieri thought everything had been negotiated, he suddenly saw from the memo sent by the Football Association that the Football Association actually disagrees with him to continue to retain his connection with Rome, and in fact requires him to completely cut it.

Ranieri has won a good reputation everywhere throughout his career, and one key is to be open and honest. But from this memorandum, he saw that he was just a pawn that was allowed to be played by others. The Football Association did not really invite him to coach so enthusiastically, nor did he fulfill the promises in the conversation between the two sides. Ranieri made it very clear to Gravina from the beginning that the prerequisite for taking over the national team is not to give up his role as an advisor in Rome. And now, the memorandum only allows him to be someone who reports to the Roman boss “behind the scenes” and “in private”, which is not something Ranieri is willing to do.

The flow of events is strangely lies in that after Ranieri withdraws, Pioli and other candidates suddenly become secondary, and "2006 World Championship Members Priority" suddenly became the Football Association's route. Then, Girardino, Grosso and others were not even mentioned. Not long ago, Gattuso, who could not even lead the wealthy Haiduke in Croatia, suddenly became the first candidate.

How does a foreign broker have such powerful energy? This itself is unreasonable. It should have been easy to boycott this person collectively. But the problem is that everyone is proud of "having a personal relationship with Mendes". Just like everyone tried to please Moji back then, everyone thought that relying on this international broker could get more benefits than others and get out of the predicament and win honor. The "Harvard-level" AC Milan was at the forefront last season. It was only this summer that he learned from his mistakes and decided to return to the old path and invite a "old-school manager" Tare.

On the field, the man who broke with Mendes won, and he was "only" 40 years old.