By now he has made his decision. Amauri wants to play for the Italian national team. Dunga doesn't want to call him up for Brazil, and Amauri knows that Lippi is interested in calling him up to the Azzurri. Amauri thought he would be getting his passport sometime this month and that Lippi would call him up for October's World Cup qualifiers, but that is not the case, as a new Italian law (passed on August 8th) will now prevent Amauri from getting his Italian passport until March 2010.

Milan fans must be laughing their toes off after Kakha Kaladze scored two own goals against the Azzurri on Saturday. "Secretly, after being a Milan player, he wants to play for our national team!" says Tami, our amico from Italy. "He scored two goals to help us qualify.

Italy took another step towards World Cup qualification a 2-0 victory over Georgia courtesy of a...
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Inter president Massimo Moratti has commented on the possibility of Thiago Motta playing for Italy at the international level, claiming he "loves" the idea. The player has dual citizenship and has already announced his desire to play for the Azzurri.

"It's always a pleasure to see one of your own players with the blue jersey on," he stated to Inter's official website, inter.

One of the biggest complains you hear about the Azzurri is that not enough youngsters are called up to the team. This is due to numerous reasons; Balotelli is still eligible for the U21 team and Italy rarely calls up players that young, while other players like Acquafresca are unable to even hold down a starting spot at a club.

A lot has been said about Serie A's decline over the past couple of years. Critics have claimed the English Premiership and Spain's La Liga have become Europe's best leagues leaving Serie A to challenge the Bundesliga for third spot.

Sadly, Serie A has witnessed a sharp decline in the past few years that cannot be attributed to the lack of financial means alone.

via Reuters

• Now that we have your undivided ATTENTION, it appears that "Mr-Italiano-But-I-Still-Love-Brazil" Amauri will not be summoned to the Azzurri anytime soon after the Italian football federation announced plans to "play all World Cup qualifiers with the current squad.

International week is boring. There's really no news from Serie A, and we get a week of Lippi dodging questions about Mourinho and Cassano. Here's the highlights from today's game. Italy won 2-0, finally a decent performance. Pirlo excelled as a trequartista, Zambrotta actually ran up and down the wing, De Rossi is the most important part of our midfield, Iaquinta and Gila actually had pretty good chemistry, Grosso is still awesome, Buffon is back to being Buffon, Marchisio put in a good performance, and Simone Pepe still manages to fall over his own two feet.

With Brazilian striker Amauri close to becoming an Italian citizen, it looks like Bayern Munich's Luca Toni will find it quite hard to represent Italy in South Africa. Azzurri Boss Marcello Lippi has hinted on more than one occasion that Amauri will be very useful for the national team.

I have yet to wade into the Cassano/Lippi debate fully, but after another superlative performance...
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I always like to watch videos of bloopers, and this time I've found a Serie A blooper video from the early 2000's. Always entertaining, and it includes a mistake from Buffon!! (how often do you see those?)

Video after the jump.

And since we're on the topic of Buffon mistakes, here's another one I remember from a couple of years ago:

Italy have practically qualified for the World Cup following their more than fortunate win away to Georgia (thanks to our very own Kaladze) and their impressive win against Bulgaria. In the first match the Azzurri were poor lacking any creativity whatsoever. That was until Lippi pushed Pirlo up into the trequartista role.

Despite having a strong U-21 side, Italy's other youth national teams don't really have a glorious history. All of Italy's youth focus is directed to the U-21 team, and you never hear anything about the other sides. In addition, besides the U-21 team Italy's youth sides have never really won anything, despite participating at many tournaments.