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| Abete confident for World Cup |
Monday 29 June, 2009 |
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FIGC President Giancarlo Abete has spoken of his optimism ahead of the 2010 World Cup despite Italy’s Confederations Cup failure.
Abete is convinced Marcello Lippi will be able to reshuffle the squad before is too late, although the Azzurri do still need to qualify first.
“The scores in the Confederations Cup don’t count but it was important for us to discover South Africa before next summer,” said the President.
“This experience proved valuable for our Coach, who will be making some conclusions. He has been able to assess the team at an important competition. Apart from the match against Brazil we played good second halves but our players were generally tired after a long season.
“Now the first thing is achieving qualification to the World Cup. Nations like Portugal and Sweden may not make it, while Brazil will no doubt be the team to beat.”
Starting from September Lippi may be able to count on Amauri, who is about to get an Italian passport, and Abete confirmed these rumours.
“He wants to become Italian. The Juventus player is following all the procedures according to the legal requirements. Then it will be up to Marcello to decide whether to call him up.
“Serie A will start in August in order to give our players enough time to rest before the World Cup. Our clubs have always respected that but now we have to see if foreign clubs owning Italian players will do the same.”
Regarding Italy’s Under-21 side Abete revealed his desire to keep Pierluigi Casiraghi at the helm of the team, although a deal hasn’t been agreed yet.
“Casiraghi has done a good job and if he has the motivation to start all over again our Federation will support him.
“I spoke to him after our defeat to Germany and we said that we were going to have another chat next week. Generally I am happy with our overall performance,” concluded Abete.
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