Conte should build Italy team around underrated Insigne | by Stefano Agresti
Talking about Napoli ace, he’s not only scored eight goals this season, but he also registered six assists, which means that he has directly contributed to 14 goals for Napoli, almost one per game.
Insigne’s opener against Torino on Thursday night was impressive, while his assist for Marek Hamisk’s winner was even hard to imagine. He is a genius, good at technical thing and able to produce a brand of consistent individual brilliance. It feels like last year’s injury has strengthen him as Insigne is finally a decisive player, on verge of becoming a true champion.
Given that the rest of Italian technical footballers are not in shape (Giuseppe Rossi) or are almost lost causes (Mario Balotelli), you’d think that a player like Insigne must be a mainstay of Italy squad.
You’d be wrong.
Insigne failed to earn a call-up to Antonio Conte’s side for the last two Italy friendly games, allegedly because the Azzurri head coach was upset with the player for an injury that he had picked more than a month before and that wasn’t letting up.
But why should Insigne have played those games if he was not in shape? Sure enough Conte is a bit too irritable as at the time he also declared that “two or three goals are not enough to deserve Italy’s shirt”
Now, if Insigne’s contenders for Italy call-up would be the likes of Roberto Baggio, Alessandro Del Piero, Gianfranco Zola or Francesco Totti, we could also understand Conte’s point of view (even if Insigne has scored more than ‘two or three’ goals).
But with Italian football’s lack of quality, we believe that Napoli’s playmaker can’t be only considered a simple player who’s part of Italy squad. He must be the cornerstone of the team. One of the few players who you need to build the team around.
The only good Italian striker out there is Sampdoria’s Eder and we had to convince him to play with the Azzurri rather than with Brazil, his home country.
We’re having a bad, strange, feeling that Insigne is underrated in Italy. If he was coming from Serbia or South America, or maybe if he’d only wear a shirt “with stripes” like Maurizio Sarri says, we would consider him a ‘crack’ player. On the other hand, most people think of him as an average footballer that Italy can easily do without.
