Former FIGC President Carlo Tavecchio is “amazed” Giampiero Ventura has left Chievo already, and discusses Italy’s World Cup failure one year on.
The CT was in charge a year ago today when the Azzurri drew with Sweden to lose the play-off, and today his contract with the Flying Donkeys was terminated by mutual termination.
“The day of the apocalypse,” Tavecchio recalled on RMC Sport.
Former FIGC President Carlo Tavecchio is “amazed” Giampiero Ventura has left Chievo already, and discusses Italy’s World Cup failure one year on.
The CT was in charge a year ago today when the Azzurri drew with Sweden to lose the play-off, and today his contract with the Flying Donkeys was terminated by mutual termination.
“The day of the apocalypse,” Tavecchio recalled on RMC Sport.
“At that time I was hoping that the federal council would resign en masse after something as serious as Italy’s failure to qualify.
“Those resignations didn’t arrive, so they I started to think of resigning myself.
“The facts since speak for themselves: leagues have started with an odd number of teams, eight teams are yet to play a game – it’s a situation which hasn’t occurred in 120 years.
“As for Ventura, the CT had been boosted by six wins in a row. We started with [Antonio] Conte’s tenure, where everyone agreed he did the impossible with those players.
“In the first six games there were no problems, then there was a change of formation and players and we got to the Sweden game.
“If a CT has to call on Serie A reserves there’s nothing you can do. The number of foreigners needs to be reduced by law, I asked for a maximum of five foreign players per team.
“After Conte, who for economic reasons went abroad, we had two ideas: [Gianni] De Biasi or Ventura. One was in Tirana, the other in Turin.
“The decision on Ventura was made with everyone’s consent, and I had and still have a very cordial relationship with the former CT.
“Ventura made bad choices on players though. One of our best players, [Lorenzo] Insigne didn’t play and I don’t know why. We had players who could have helped him, but he didn’t use them.
“He remains a Coach with class though, and he had a remarkable CV.
“Chievo? I was amazed at his decision. That should have been his revenge in football. He’d made his comeback, and I don’t understand why he left again.”
Before the play-off it was rumoured the players had turned on Ventura, did Tavecchio consider sacking him?
“No, nobody spoke to me about talks between the players, meetings, or anything else.
“I was at Appiano Gentile until 17.30 on the day of the Italy-Sweden game with Ventura, [Renzo] Ulivieri, [Michele] Uva and [Lele] Oriali: we never thought about replacing him.
“It’s easy to change a Coach if you’re at a club, but in the national team there have to be deliberations, it’s not just what Tavecchio decides.”
It initially appeared that Tavecchio was forced to resign, but he claims he could have stayed on if he wanted to.
“If I’d asked for a vote by the council I could have maintained the Presidency. But not being at the World Cup drained my strength.
“I decided that I would resign, given the indifference of others. We were the Federation that got four teams in the Champions League, at least €100m more in turnover; we brought VAR, the Under-21 European Championships and great liquidity.
“It was just the very serious problem of not being at the World Cup that made everyone forget all the good work we did.”