September 14, 2000

Commentary on Morace's rough road ahead
Mario Rimati

Carolina will have a lot on her plate in a few weeks as she will make her international debut in Grado. No doubt a lot of the local and national media will be on hand for the occasion, mostly out of curiosity too as Carolina has been around the world of Italian soccer, both female and male, for the last 20 odd-years of her life. She is after all THE most visible female soccer in Italy and has given a lot as a player as well as a public figure on national t.v. (as a play-by-play commentator for the men's Serie A, including the French World Cup and the recent European championship in Holland/Belgium). It will remain to be seen though if her success as a player will also carry over into the world of coaching. As many players and sports enthusiasts know, playing is one thing, coaching another. What perhaps Italy in this very moment needs are several Carolina Morace at the club level, not to mention in the school physical education programs. If the recent performance of Len Tsantiris' UConn team is anything to go by (see "Huskies put on show in Italy"), then the entire program in Italy, starting from the Italian F.A., needs to be desperately revamped. There's no Morace in the world who will be able to compete with th eathletic capabilities, not to mention technical skills, that a country like America has to now offer, not to mention the Nordic countries such as Norway and Sweden which have always been a thorn in the side to Italy. What's interesting to note is that whereas U.S. women's soccer probably gets rarely compared to what the men's national team does (the WNT after all IS soccer in the U.S.) practically everything in Italy, including playing systems, gets constantly compared to what the "big boys" do. True, as Carolina said,she has no magic wand up her sleeve and she can't possibly change the mentality of an entire nation overnight (ie certain myths such as it's not "lady-like" for a young woman to play soccer still prevail in Italy), but with her important role in Italian society she can certainly put pressure on FA officials to first of all open their purse strings and allow, like the U.S. will do next spring with the WUSA, players to do what they no doubt love doing most in life: playing soccer. The very fact of five key players already missing this all-important first gathering with Carolina shows the many difficulties that Italian female soccer still faces, irrespective of
whether Carolina Morace sits or doesn't sit on the national team bench. What perhaps is more worrying is will Carolina stick it out for the next four years? If she doesn't immediately get what she wants (ie support from the FA as well as from the presidents of the Serie A clubs who like their counterparts in tbe men's Serie A are primarily interested in what their own teams do and not necessarily what the national team does), will she have the patience to wait? After all, her experience as a coach in three different teams (Lazio's regional all-star team, Lazio's Serie A female club and Viterbese) were all rather short-lived, not exceeding on average more than two to three months. Carolina's arrival on the national team was indeed long overdue. It's now everyone's hope that for the "Good of the Game", she 'll turn things around and point Italian female soccer in the right direction.