ROME TRUTHS

Legend Zola reckons the decline in Italian football has been coming for years

THE 2006 World Cup win and the genius of Antonio Conte covered up the cracks in Italian football, according to Gianfranco Zola.

And now, like the leaning Tower of Pisa, the four-time World Cup winners need to rebuild the foundations of their game to stop the whole structure toppling over.

Italy are restarting from Year Zero after the humiliating November play-off defeat by Sweden that saw them miss out on the World Cup finals for the first time since 1958.

But Friday night’s lame 2-0 defeat by Argentina showed the old problems remain amid politics worthy of the Borgias at the top of the Italian game.

Conte, Carlo Ancelotti, Claudio Ranieri and Roberto Mancini are the candidates to be the next full-time coach of the Azzurri team which faces England tomorrow night.

But Zola (above), scorer of the winning goal against England at Wembley in 1997, said: “Maybe the World Cup win made us believe that all our problems were solved. The new national coach will not have a magic wand. Ancelotti, for example, is a great coach but he cannot do everything on his own.

“The problems that have held us back for years were masked in 2016 by the phenomenon that is Antonio Conte.

“We are lacking quality. We need to start with the youth sector and not think about results but about player development. Players of a certain type don’t come through any more because they are not given time.

“We have to do better and we should take Germany and Spain as examples.”

Conte’s Italy beat Belgium and Spain at Euro 2016 before losing on penalties in the quarter-finals to Germany.

But the warning signs were there with Italy failing to get out of the group stages at the last two World Cups. Juventus have reached two Champions League finals in the last three years but the last Italian winners were Jose Mourinho’s foreign-dominated Inter Milan side in 2010, while Parma in 1999 were the last UEFA Cup/ Europa League winners. A weak Italian economy over the period has been a factor.

But Alessandro Costacurta, the emergency vice-commissioner who has promised to appoint a new coach by May 20, said after the Argentina defeat: “We have to look at the players we have. If we had had Guardiola or Mourinho on the bench, would it have changed anything? No.”

Caretaker coach Luigi Di Biagio has not made massive changes to the squad – and has caused controversy by retaining 40-year-old keeper Gianluigi Buffon.

The 1982 World Cup winner Claudio Gentile said: “If we have to rely on those who failed to earn qualification for the 2018 World Cup then we’re in trouble. Many of those players don’t deserve to wear the Azzurri jersey. Gigi Buffon is a legend but we ought to rebuild based on young players, otherwise they’ll never gain the right international experience.”

To go with Boxing Day Serie A fixtures, more reforms such as allowing big clubs to play reserve teams in lower leagues are also proposed by Costacurta. But former coach Arrigo Sacchi, who took Italy to the 1994 World Cup final, has called for a more attacking playing style. “It’s time for change,” said the ex-Milan boss. “If we think we’ve hit rock bottom by failing to qualify for the World Cup then we’re wrong.

“Italian football is a mirror of society – we’re a cunning people. We use tactics even when we go shopping.

But without a strategy, tactics are nothing. We’ve always had defensive football – the last offensive war we fought was when we were Romans!”

We are lacking quality. We need to start with the youth sector and not just look at results