PROFILE

MARCO MATERAZZI

CAREER

Materazzi has never been considered a great defender. He had a very late breakthrough. After some seasons in Serie C1, Serie D and Serie B, he was finally getting some playing time in Serie A too. It was the season 96/97 where he played 14 matches with Perugia. He wasn´t famous at all, nor would he be the next season which he also spended with Perugia but in Serie B this time.

It was the next season, the season 1998/99 season that he would finally get some recognition. Well, it hurts to say he got recognized because of his bad performances. He played in the EPL this season, with Everton. Was not having a good season despite that he atleast played 27 matches.
So Materazzi became an Everton reject and he moved back to Italy and his third spell with Perugia. This became the turning point of his career.

The first season with Perugia he had a quite good season. Nothing awesome, but he didn´t goofed up either. It was the next season that he was gonna have his huge breakthrough.

The season 2000/01 will never be forgotten by the Perugia fans, Materazzi and Serie A fans overall. Not only was he completely brilliant in his defensive job in their back three, where he was the libero and backbone, but he also recorded numbers of goals from a defender. A recod previously held by Daniel Passarella. Materazzi was Perugia´s leading free kick taker and penalty taker and therefore could score amazing 12 goals from a defender.
This and mixed with his defensive attributions this season, meant that the big teams stood in line for getting his signing.
Inter won the race and secured the contract even before that season had finished. Was signed at the same time as we signed Emre and Okan.

Now he was off to his first big team in his career after one rocket season. Even though his age is high, he´s not experienced at all.

But nevertheless, he would become a huge protoganist with Inter. He partnered up with Cordoba and they did it excellent. BUT, he had problems with injuries that kept him out of 11 matches. Still, this tall defender that once failed with Everton became a NT player with Italy as well.
He had the honour to act as Nesta´s understoody.

Later he was found guilty and blamed for the failur in the WC. A very bad match against Croatia, and that´s the latest thing from him. But Materazzi claims that this experienced was positive, which I gotta agree with.

That´s pretty much it of his rather short professional career.

AS A PLAYER

Materazzi is what we call a "libero". That means that he´s a player that is supposed to guide his defence and be the one who sets up the ball in play. He receives a complete free role in defence, if they play a back three. He´s supposed to cover up for the rest of the defenders.
However, Materazzi can also play zonal defence in a back four. He´s very good at this, since the runs he has to make becomes less.

Materazzi is not a fast player. When he moves sideways, he is very slow. It´s his biggest vulnerability. He has very little acceleration but that is also because he is so big.
BUT!!!! instead, he is very good at positional play and that´s why he makes normally very few mistakes. He doesn´t need his pace to be able to defend. The same way as the big guys like Bergomi and Blanc previously defended, so is Materazzi doing. But not with as much leadership as they did.

Materazzi´s biggest asset is the aerial play. Absolutely brilliant in the air, due to his height and strenght. He scores a lot of goals like this and he also defend a lot of potential goals like this. He doesn´t need to jump high to be able to beat the attackers.

His ball distribution is also very good, hence why he can play as a libero. He makes a lot of long balls with his left foot and he has good precision on them. This will come in handy when Corradi plays who absolutely rocks at heading those balls to another player.

He plays way too overly agressive though. He can sometimes just freak out in defence and make a vulgar tackle that causes yellow or red cards and penalties. This is NOT a good habbit of him and especially at the end of last season he was highly critizised because of this. He has a very bad temper and can fight with the opponents.

To me, Materazzi IS a worldclass defender. Maybe not of the highest level such as Nesta, Samuel, Thuram and so on, but a level where he can with passion and enthusiasm be more important than what those other players could be. He plays rather consistently and only had bad matches with Inter when everyone else had. I can also look by the only WC match he was allowed to play.

Materazzi also likes bringing the ball offensively by dribbling through the midfield. With Perugia he did this a lot.

Jimmy Fredholm