Come i campioni del mondo: Mucche Pazze 2 – Le Sobrinhos 4

Travelling back from Germany last Sunday, I had the doubtful pleasure to listen to Italy-Brazil on the radio. Tonight it seemed to me that I saw the pictures to the commentary. The Mucche Pazze of tonight bore some resemblance with the world champions of 2006 – they looked very, very tired and hardly got anything done on the pitch. The fact that they were playing against a team with a Portuguese-Brazilian sounding name only enhanced this impression. My initial thought was that those were the consequences of the Coppa Pavone (or worse, the June Ball). But then I realized that they won their match last week, even closer to these infamous events. So there must be another explanation. Since I don’t want to start my usual “I am a jinx” lament again, I will suggest another compelling reason for the apparent lack of physical fitness: the absence of fitness coach Giovanni “Achilles” Mazzoni.
But let’s talk a bit about the match. As I learnt from last week’s report (complimenti to capoultrà Marco, a more than worthy replacement for il cronista), the Mucche conceded an early goal then. This is a common theme this season, and the team lived up to the expectations of “the merry visitors”, as Marco put it. Three minutes into the game, a nice combination of theirs, their striker takes a shot from central position – 0-1! This was followed by a series of good occasions for the Sobrinhos, but each time Isa, who was back in goals after some secret training in the motherland of good goalkeeping, prevented the worst.
It wasn’t until way into the first half that the Emmepì, namely Mi Ah, took their first shot on goal, but it went wide. Unlike their striker’s shot which concluded the immediate counter attack and doubled the score to 0-2 after a quarter of an hour. A wake up call? Unfortunately not. They kept pushing, and except for a shot by Sara that went high and a free kick by Sandra that went wide, there was only the Brazilians playing. It was thanks to Isa Buffon (and Sandra Cannavaro, it should be mentioned) that the score remained at 0-2 at half time.
Second verse – same as the first! Two great saves by Isa in the very first minute, followed by the 0-3 after the resulting corner. Finally, someone appeared to have heard the alarm ringing, because shortly after Ale almost scored the first Mucche goal, but her shot found the post. But anything we could do they could do better tonight, and so they managed to hit the post in an even more spectacular way shortly after, as the goal was completely empty.
This period of action was followed by some five minutes without any noteworthy event. But then, almost out of the blue, Ale tanked her way to the baseline, got the ball into the box, their goalie did not manage to fist the ball out of the danger zone, and Mi Ah hammered the ball into the empty goal to make it 1-3 after some 13 minutes into the second half. This was a glimmer of hope, which the Sobrinhos however were not willing to tolerate for very long: the immediate counter attack saw them hit the post again.
Now the two teams finally faced each other at eye level: a free kick and a shot by Ale were followed by a great effort by Amy, but none of this led to a second goal. This was followed by two fast attacks of theirs, and both times their striker missed the goal only by an inch. But third time is charm, also for Sobrinhos, and their third attack within three minutes sealed the 1-4. The numerous spectators (including even staunch supporters from the Dutch Emmepì fanclub) saw some more entertaining back and forth on the pitch, and after hitting the post again, Ale finally managed to score a goal after a beautiful assist by Mi Ah. Too bad that this was two minutes from the end. All that remained was another goal by them which was cancelled however, since the ball touched the net that covers the pitch on its trajectory towards the goal. Otherwise it might have brought down the Alitalia Boeing that was passing over the Rachetta premises at this very moment, so this was definitely the preferable outcome. And it was no goal!
All that remains to be said in the end is: get well soon Achilles! Your team needs you. But I’m sure that after a delicious dinner da Giovanni, fitness won’t be an issue any more.

Jannis

The team: Isabell – Sandra – Christel – Alice – Amy – Mi Ah (1) – Sara – Ale (1)