Trapattoni "Del Piero plays for his own merit"

October 11, 2000
Italian-Soccer.com

After the great performance of last Saturday night, which left satisfied everyone, players, fans, coach, press, Giovanni Trapattoni is ready to seat for the third time on Italian national team bench to face Georgia, hoping to wide the gap with the other teams in the World Cup qualifier group. And after the flue who hit Filippo Inzaghi, Trap already decided to give space among the starters to Alessandro Del Piero.

"I also thought to give a chance to Vincenzo Montella, forming in that way the AS Roma's attack, and it's possible I will act in that way during the match. But finally I opted for Del Piero since he deserved more to play, looking to the hard job he did during training in last days. So if he plays it's for his own merit, not for charity!"

"On Saturday I decided to bench him and it was not just luck the result we got. I was persuaded to make play versus Romania Marco Delvecchio for his characteristics and his performance was great, even better than I expected. Now, in the game against Georgia I need a player as Del Piero as well"

About the opponent, Trapattoni said "Well we must to keep the leadership of our group, also if it won't be easy to repeat the great performance we showed against Romania. What we must avoid is to think it will be easy to take the win, that we will be able to score three goals in the first 30 minutes. We already faced Georgia in the past and they were able to trouble us; besides now they are coming from a great match with Lithuania. Especially in defence we must be careful since they played in a totally different way than Romania!"
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