Growing up in the nineties I looked on in amazement as Italy seemed to mass produce wonderful forward after wonderful forward.

You had the likes of Roberto Baggio, Pippo Inzaghi, Alessandro Del Piero, Christian Vieri and Gianluca Vialli all scoring more than fifteen goals each for the Azzurri. You then had attacking stars like Roberto Mancini, Gianfranco Zola, Giuseppe Signori, Toto Schillachi and Francesco Totti who could come in and add a few goals as well as creativity.

Much was expected of the current crop. In particular Italians were hoping that one of Mario Balotelli, Lorenzo Insigne, Ciro Immobile and Andrea Belotti could become the dependable goalscoring forward that they were desperately needing.

Yet only Balotelli has scored double figures for the Italian national team (14 goals in 36 caps) and Mario went four years without playing for the Azzurri. Mancini has brought him back into the fold earlier in the year but then dropped the Nice striker for the latest squad due to fitness issues.

In total Belotti, Balotelli, Immobile and Insigne have scored a combined total of thirty goals in 118 international appearances.

No one has came in and made the number nine jersey their own.

Former international forward Mancini has been brought in to get more out of the country’s national team. It was with embarrassment that they had to watch this summer’s World Cup without seeing their blue shirt being represented on the pitch.

The Azzurri are now sitting in twentieth place in the World Rankings and are behind Wales and Poland. Interestingly Gareth Bale has scored thirty times for Wales and Robert Lewandowski has banged in fifty-five strikes for Poland.

So far new boss Roberto has had a very mixed start to his era in charge of Italy. He’s won just once in his first six games, drawing the last fixture a home friendly with Ukraine and also failing to win either of their opening Nations League matches.

A glaring problem has once again been the Azzurri’s lack of goals. They have only scored six times in those six games. The last two goals have come from midfielder Jorginho and winger Federico Bernardeschi.

Belotti, Balotelli, Insigne and Immobile have all had competitive minutes this year without finding the net.

I think Mancini needs to select his preferred centre-forward, tell him and then give him a run of games to prove that he can be the goalscorer that Italy needs. Too much chopping and changing creates confusion and impacts on an already fragile morale.

Napoli forward Insigne and Lazio hitman Immobile are both in the squad this week and have started their Serie A seasons impressively. So hopefully one of them can take their chance this weekend.

They’ve got an important Nations League away tie against Poland in Chorzow later today and they really need to find a win to get Mancini’s era back on track.

Without a regular goalscorer, I’m not sure Italy can become one of the world’s elite again. They have other problems but a prolific striker can solve a lot of issues!

Posted on October 14th, 2018 by scott
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