“De Rossi isn’t a gamble for me, on the contrary I have always had great respect for him as I did four years ago when he made the leap from the Azzurrini to the senior squad,” Lippi explained.
“I think that if a player is great then they must play with the best and now he is one of the strongest midfielders in the world.
“In Germany at the 2006 World Cup he paid for his sending off against the USA with a four-game ban but I played him in the Final and he took a very important penalty. He had already grown by that point.”
