By Gautam Sharma
There was a time when the Fantasista was the most celebrated player in Italian football... the protagonists, these were the real Gods in Italy, the ones who provided fantasy to the game.... a spark of colour in a sea of black & white, or the artists midst the atheletes... Rivera, Mazzola, Baggio, etc - the history of Italian football is not complete without reviewing its legendary "Fantasista". Sadly, not only are the fantasista disappearing from the modern Italian game, its now more like a disease which is destroying the most talented crop of Italian football talent.... a disease called Fantasistitis...
Fantasista (the fantasy player) has been typically employed as the Trequartista in the last few decades... Trequartista (which literally means "three quarters" in Italian) is a role of a creative playmaker who plays in the "hole" between your midfield and attack (ie three-quarters up the pitch). In the last few decades, Azzurri sides were built around their trequartista... whether it be Baggio, Zola, Del Piero or Totti (examples from the last 2 decades), this is where the Italian sides got most of their fantasy from... The regista, a deep lying half brother to the fantasista, being the other role which provides creativity. But while the regista has flourished in the modern game, the fantasista is becoming more of an endangered species...
This summer, the inconcievable happened... the Italian squad in the World Cup lacked any players who could play as a trequatista... there was NO FANTASISTA! Not that the Italians have stopped producing such players (we have all heard/screamed arguements about how Totti/Cassano/Miccoli/Rossi should have made the World Cup Squad). Its more to do with the fact that Lippi did not have any use of a fantasista in his modern gameplan. It wasn't the form/fitness of the existing Italian fantasista's, or their undeniable talent, that stopped them from making the World Cup Squad... They were just clearly suffering from a case of fantasistitis, that typical Italian disease, where everyone and his mother praise you for your talent and skills but somehow you are never good enough to start, due to vague issues related to team balance, tactics, workrate, contribution, experience, determination...
The disease is spreading accross, slowly but surely... the origins of this disease can be traced back to sometime around 1994, post the World Cup, when Roberto Baggio (then the current World Player of the Year) suddenly fell to a bad case of this yet unknown disease.... he was dropped from the Italian national team, and found himself somewhat of a luxury player at Juventus... indeed, fans of that wonderful amazing player (like yours truely) could not understand at that time why such a great player was never again the main protagonist of a big team, inspite of showing he was still as good a fantasista as you could find during his stints at smaller clubs (Bologna, Brescia)... Then we saw young Pirlo, the MVP at jr Euro's for Azzurrini, suffer from the same symptoms at Inter... he found his salvation as a regista at Milan. Zola never got the chances his talent deserved in the peninsula. Even Del Piero, the legend at his club, has suffered from this disease in the last few years, having to play as a winger or stay on the bench...
And now young Giovinco, for many years touted as the most gifted of players of the new generation, is growing middle-aged (from a footballing sense) on the Juventus bench. He has caught a serious case of fantasistitus, a disease the modern coach does not want in his team.
Perhaps Totti was the last of the great line of Italian Fantasista's to have escaped from this disease... will the legendary Italian fantasista become extinct with the fading trequartista? Do we have to endure watching the likes of Pepe running around in the future, instead of watching magic from the likes of Cassano? I guess only time will tell...
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