Guidolin defends decision to rest Udinese big guns

UDINESE coach Francesco Guidolin came to Scotland on holiday earlier this year. This week he seems to have returned on a jolly.

That was the charge levelled at him last night as it emerged the club’s forward fulcrum Antonio Di Natale will be one of several experienced performers the Serie A joint-leaders choose to do without for their Europa League group game at Celtic Park this evening.

Guidolin was at pains to stress that the omission of Di Natale, top scorer in the Italian top flight these past two years but who didn’t even travel, and the inclusion of potentially two teenagers and five others aged 24 or under, wasn’t how it might look. He would have brought along other players but “many of them are tired”.

He put Di Natale in that bracket, then he said he wasn’t fit. “I want to make it absolutely clear to the Scottish journalists that I am not thumbing my nose up at the Europa League or underestimating Celtic,” the Udinese coach, 55, said.

“This is probably the toughest group in the competition. Even if I’d brought my full squad, it would have been a young squad. The squad will be younger than normal, but to play Di Natale would have probably meant he would have been injured and out for some weeks.”

Earlier, Guidolin had stated that Di Natale’s absence could be explained by the 33-year-old having played four games in 15 days. “If he was here I couldn’t have expected much out of him,” he said. “A free-kick or a shot out of nothing. He’s not fit. He could only have played part of the game.”

The fact he will play no part of it and fellow front men and Paulo Barreto and Antonio Floro Flores are also back in Italy because of knocks, opens up the possibility that there will not be a single frontline striker in Udinese’s starting XI.

Moreover, if the Italian media have called Guidolin’s intentions correctly, the average age of the five-man midfield he sends out will be 20, with the likes of 17-year-old Mattia Bedin and 19-year-old Christian Battocchio pressed into action. The only genuine attacking spearhead in the Udinese travelling party is another 17-year-old, Davide Marsura.

He is expected to start on the bench with Swiss midfielder Almen Adbi pushed up in advance of Diego Fabbrini.

“Yes it is a problem, there are just no others available at the moment,” Guidolin said of his problems in the striking department.

But he baulked at the notion he has just brought a patchwork of promising players to Glasgow, as seemed to be the accusation he faced from his home media. “What people in Italy are saying is not important. The choices I have made are logical ones,” he said, with necessity governing his selections, he maintained. “If anyone doesn’t like it, tough. The club have invested a lot in young players, many from overseas, and we have a big squad. If we never give the young ones a game then how can we say we believe in them.”

Guidolin is adamant he is not disrespecting Celtic by fielding a weakened side. “If we were playing Atletico Madrid or Rennes tomorrow I would have made the same decisions,” he said.

“In two weeks from now [against Atletico Madrid], who knows?”