While thirty-one countries fine-tune their preparations for the biggest showpiece event in the world, Italy and its World Cup hopes flutter in a maelstrom of controversy. As phlegmatic as Italy coach Marcello Lippi is, the press revelations of the sordid dealings of Luciano Moggi must be taking their toll even on him.

On Friday, May 19, Lippi appeared in front of magistrates to assure the authorities and a morbidly intrigued Italian public that he never gave in to ‘Moggi pressure’ when selecting players for the Italian national team.
The idea that Moggi had influenced Lippi’s decisions gained momentum when prosecutors scrutinized the mischievous figure’s sporting agency, GEA. The agency, in which Lippi’s son Davide is also an employee, represents a sizeable chunk of Italian football players. Allegedly, Moggi had put pressure on Lippi to not select Juventus players for the national team so that injuries and fatigue would not impinge on the club’s and GEA’s commercial interests.

The accusations do indeed seem absurd when one considers how candidly Lippi has picked players from all over the Serie A spectrum, including Juventus. Remember it was Lippi who gave caps to players from unfashionable sides like Palermo and Udinese, something that his predecessors did as almost a token gesture.

Lippi emerged from the three hour questioning with not a feather ruffled and confidently declared: “Everything is fine, I am calm.”

That his composed front can weather the storm until June 9 looks more and more likely. Lippi is a supreme pragmatist, a coach who knows that it would be unfair and indeed tragic to allow his preparations to be greatly compromised by Moggi’s indiscretions (which, by the way, also include, match-fixing and strong arm tactics in the market).

The romantic in us would like to think that the Italian team will come together as a result of all the moral accounting — hey, at least it’s a break from the financial variety — going on in Serie A. It is a possibility, given how well the current team gets along, a fact signified by the vociferous, arms-together renditions of the national anthem. In my view, one of Giovanni Trapattoni’s biggest failures was the fact that he could never instill any team spirit in the Italian side.

With all the controversy around Lippi one cannot help but think of Enzo Bearzot’s position before the 1982 World Cup. Italo Allodi — a former high executive at Inter and one against whom celebrated British journalist Brian Glanville raised many ethical exceptions — worked to destabilize Bearzot, simply because he did not approve of his appointment.

Bearzot had the last laugh as Italy hoisted the World Cup after a sluggish start. Can Lippi, amidst demoralizing circumstances, buoy the team’s spirits? Will he use the siege that Italy are under to the team’s advantage? Will he, like Bearzot, declare a press silence at some point?
The answers to those questions will thankfully come quicker than to the ones facing the Italian game.

Hasan Saiyid has a burgeoning section on the World Cup, including player profiles, team profiles and a special ’Italia focus section’, on his site at: www.totalsoccer.ca