Magnifico!! - Over to you Worthy!

[Yellow Rider 0]

Hi posters, Yellow Rider reporting back for duty.

Last nights game was an absolute classic even at 0-0, it''s difficult to know where to start in evaluating it.

Great credit must go to the referee who let the game flow, those supposedly ''cheating foreigners'' for, by and large, just getting up and getting on with the game and of course to all the players for producing such a spectacle of football from minute 1 to minute 120. I don''t think I have ever seen two teams commit themselves to such attacking football in extra time. As the commentator said ..........''there are two games going on here, one in each penalty area'' The icing on the cake was the quality of both Italian goals - stunning! The poise, vision and final pass from Pirlo to create the opening for Grosso for the first goal was fantastic. I was screaming at him initially just to shoot as he had some space on the edge of the box and there was only a couple of minutes left, how wrong I was!     

How does this all link in with Worthy though and this supposedly ''quality'' coach we now have at Colney? Well to begin with I sincerely hope that they recorded the match and have sat the entire playing staff at Norwich from Academy lads up to old man Fleming down and encouraged them to follow the principles that Italy and Germany showed last night. The first message is that ''hoofball'' should now, finally, be discarded to the scrapheap. The number of long high ball from the back four last night could be counted on the fingers of one hand I think! Yes there were long balls but almost invariably these were aimed at a colleague in space. The defenders all had great touch, confidence and the ability to bring the ball out and play to feet - WORTHY & CO PLEASE TAKE NOTE!!!     

Ok so the individual players may be technically better than ours but at the end of the day it''s all about coaching, belief in how the game should be played, confidence and encouragement. We CAN play a similar style of football in this country and at Norwich in particular. What also struck me was the sheer enjoyment that all the players seemed to get from being involved in a game played in that style and in that manner.    

Whilst I am firmly in the Worthy Out camp I would have no hesitation in giving him my full support IF I could see and be convinced that he and his coaches are committed to developing this approach to playing football. Unfortunately I think that is very unlikely to happen but I will certainly be advocating that at the next SCG meeting later this month.