May 18, 2001

Italy and the UEFA Championship

Mario Rimati

The 1997 defending vice-European champions (runners up to Germany) will soon be embarking on yet another European Championship adventure. Head Coach Carolina Morace and her troops will be starting theirtraining camp on June 3rd on the beautiful island of Sardinia. Two weeks later on June 17th Patrizia Panico and her fellow team mates will play a friendly match near the seaside city of Genoa (the site by the way of July's G8 Summit meeting) against Finland.

Morace has worked diligently around this national team since taking over as head coach (7 victories so far in 9 matches -- many of them also friendlies): two female sports psychologists have also been working alongside Morace and her players for quite sometime now. The former Grand Dame of Italian soccer feels that certain clubs are still somewhat "anti-national team" (the feeling is often mutual in the men's game) and don't seem to fully understand that having a strong national team also means more exposure to the entire sector, especially in a country such as Italy where the men's game still reigns unquestionably supreme.

Morace expressed her admiration for those countries whose women's program is more developed than Italy's and whose national team is often broken down into several youth teams (currently, Italy only has theU-18 and A national teams).

One final wish that the former national team captain has is that of obviously doing well at the upcoming championship. For her, and many others involved more investment somewhere down Italy's long and tortuous road of women's soccer