Since 1992 he has been a collaborator of “Il Messaggero”, since 2009 he has collaborated with the “Gazzetta dello Sport”. He begins by writing about baseball, then gives in to the tentacles of football.
Latina is an unfinished team, in terms of personnel and play. Two incompletenesses inextricably linked to each other. It is a fact that the Nerazzurri squad is totally devoid of strikers and it is misleading to list the names of Mastroianni, Bocic, Addessi, Improta, Martignago under the strikers category. It is one thing to have attacking players by definition of the role, it is another thing to have elements that are attackers on the pitch, in their play, in their movements, in the number of goals.
The evidence is there for all to see: 5 goals in 13 days, the worst attack in all the Italian professional leagues. And we had unsolicited confirmation that Latina is a team incapable of doing harm, from the disheartening stalemate obtained in Biella, against Juve Next Gen, bottom of group C. Latina was facing a team fresh from 6 defeats consecutive, he was facing the worst defense in the group and yet he was unable to find the net. Bocic and Improta turned out to be two distant surrogates for a striker, but you can’t blame them, forced as they were by events and the gaps in the squad to act in a role that doesn’t belong to them. Boscaglia, like Palladino before, is looking for men and movements capable of masking the holes in the roster, but at the moment the solution seems distant.
And here comes the incompleteness of the game. In Biella for long stretches Latina played a dominant game, they didn’t allow Juve’s youngsters to cross the midfield line but nevertheless they didn’t create goal-scoring actions, they never reached the back of the net, they finished just short of the goal opponent’s goal. The Nerazzurri lacked 20 metres, the last 20 metres. That’s where the team got lost, frustrating the long construction phase. The maneuver was completed to the end on a few occasions, in particular at the end when it was Di Renzo, a defender, who became truly dangerous. Do we need to say anything else?
I hope that Boscaglia knows how to tactically remedy the lack of numbers and quality up front, otherwise it will be an ordeal between now and the market reopening. There can be many solutions and they are called density, insertions, conclusions, numerical superiority.
We have to work on it but time, although there is still plenty of it, is not Latina’s ally.
