Italy (Group E)

Team founded: 1898 (affiliated 1905)

World Cup Participations: fifteen (1934, 1938, 1950, 1954, 1962, 1966, 1970, 1974, 1978, 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2002)

World Cup Honors: World champions (1934, 1938, 1982)

Titles: European champions (1968)

Coach: Marcello Lippi (nationality: Italian)













Team Captain: Fabio Cannavaro (Juventus), a 32-year-old defender




The Squad
Goalkeepers
Marco Amelia (Livorno)
Gianluigi Buffon (Juventus)
Angelo Peruzzi (Lazio)

Defenders
Andrea Barzagli (Palermo)
Fabio Cannavaro (Juventus)
Fabio Grosso (Palermo)
Marco Materazzi (Inter Milan)
Alessandro Nesta (AC Milan)
Massimo Oddo (AC MILAN)
Cristian Zaccardo (Palermo)
Gianluca Zambrotta (Juventus)

Midfielders
Simone Barone (Palermo)
Mauro Camoranesi (Juventus)
Gennaro Gattuso (AC Milan)
Simone Perrotta (Roma)
Andrea Pirlo (AC Milan)
Daniele De Rossi (Roma)
Francesco Totti (Roma)

Forwards
Alberto Gilardino (AC Milan)
Vincenzo Iaquinta (Udinese)
Filippo Inzaghi (AC Milan)
Alessandro Del Piero (Juventus)
Luca Toni (Fiorentina)

Ranking: 14

Qualifiers: Trudged through to the top of their group despite losing early to Slovenia and not showing much throughout.

Schedule:
June 12 v Ghana (Hanover)
June 17 v USA (Kaiserslautern)
June 22 v Czech Republic (Hamburg)

The Odds: The team slumped to a ranking of 14th in the world, but staked its claim to short odds with a 7-of-10 run-up in qualifying for the tournament, although unspectacularly. They have an ironclad defense, and awesome attack, but... The Azzurri should romp over Ghana in game one, and edge out the USA in their second, but if the team falters in either of those games, it’ll face a tough closer in the Czech Republic, which may threaten its anticipated dominance of the group. A big disappointment is that striker Christian Vieri is out due to injury (knee).

The Scuttlebutt

Not the best way to go into a World Cup campaign is to have your coach caught up in a match-fixing scandal, while your whole league is embroiled in the same. But that's the fate of the Italian squad, whose coach Marcello Lippi is under pressure to resign as the World Cup approaches. He has been summoned (May 20) as a witness in an expanding match-fixing investigation. He has denied that Luciano Moggi, the former Juventus general manager who is the focus of fixing allegations, pressured him to pick particular players for the national side to benefit Moggi in transfer deals.
A poll by a leading Italian newspaper has shown that 30 per cent of football fans think that Italian Serie A will take at least three years to recover from recent accusations of false accounting, match-fixing, and illegal gambling.