By
ANDREW DAS
Marek Zakrzewski/European Pressphoto AgencyItaly’s fate at Euro 2012 may be at the mercy of the result in the Spain-Croatia game.
It should come as no surprise that the country that gave the world
Galileo and Roman numerals remains excellent at math. Even before the
final whistle had blown on
Italy’s 1-1 tie against Croatia at Euro 2012 on Thursday, the sportswriters in the stands and the tifosi at home had crunched the numbers:
Italy’s fate, after two ties,
was no longer in its hands.
Spain and Croatia, with four points in the group to Italy’s two and
facing each other in the final group match, were in position to squeeze
the Italians out with the right result.
And since Italy also gave us Machiavelli and
Calciopoli,
too, the concept of the right result was soon what everyone was talking
about. By the tiebreaking rules of the tournament, a high-scoring draw
between Spain and Croatia — say, 2-2 or 3-3 — would assure both teams
would advance to the quarterfinals even if Italy, as expected, beats
Ireland. (All the Ireland results would be tossed from consideration,
and the deciding tiebreaker in this case would be total goals scored in
the games involving the other three teams.) Soccer has a long history
of teams needing the right result getting it:
Argentina in 1978.
Germany and Austria in 1982. Juventus, well,
a lot.
Because
of that history, the Spanish and the Croats have been subjected to
several days of questions — many of them translated from the original
Italian — about whether they would play to the result that suited both
their purposes. Reporters have probed. Pundits have pontificated. And
one reporter went further; according to
Sid Lowe of The Guardian and also
the Spanish newspaper AS, the Gazzetta dello Sport correspondent
Filippo Ricci
used a visit to Spain’s training site to leave a message on a meeting
room message board: “Queridos amigos de España. Ante Croacia NO 2-2 por
favor.”
It was unclear whether the Spanish players had seen the
message — “Spanish friends, against Croatia no 2-2 please” — but they
had certainly heard the talk.
“A 2-2
could happen,” Spain defender Raul Albiol said. “Just as a 1-0 or a 0-1
could happen, but there is no pact, no fix, nothing like that.
That’s just stupid.”
Said
striker Fernando Torres: “There’s no point in even talking about it.
It’s all speculation. Speaking about it puts the very reason for why we
are here in doubt. That’s not what football is about.”
Croatia’s
coach, Slaven Bilic, said his message to Italians everywhere was simple:
trust both teams to do the right thing. “We are people of sport, rich
in religious values,” he said. “
We do not do these things.”
(It’s
all pretty rich, really, this Italian concern about arranged outcomes,
since Italy had to drop at least one player on the eve of the tournament
because he was being investigated as part of
the country’s latest match-fixing scandal.)
Italy
Coach Cesare Prandelli helpfully pointed out that none of the intrigue
would matter if his team slipped up and failed to beat Ireland on
Monday. Those teams will meet in Poznan while Spain and Croatia
simultaneously tangle (or will it be tango?) in Gdansk.
“If we start thinking about a fix,” Prandelli said, “we’ve got problems.”
He added: “
We need only think of our result.
It is inconceivable to think that a team like Spain, that has based its
entire image on the game and on the show, can program the result of a
game.”
He and his countrymen should know. They are, of course, no
strangers to match fixing, either as perpetrator or victim. As Yahoo’s
Martin Rogers wrote:
Making things worse for Italy
and its nervous supporters is that they have been in this position
before. At Euro 2004, a 2-2 draw between Sweden and Denmark knocked
Italy out of the competition amid wide-scale accusations that the game
had been fixed.
“Having been burned once before, we are entitled to be fearful,” said an editorial in the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
Ireland
coach Giovanni Trapattoni was in charge of Italy back in 2004 and
admitted the Italians were right to be concerned of a stage-managed
outcome between Spain and Croatia.
“Italy has to worry about their
game, that has to be their focus,” Trapattoni told a press conference.
“I am the Ireland manager now and that has to be my priority, but you
are right to ask these questions and it is important that the people at
UEFA keep a close eye on it.”
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