SecondErling, the city where they won the World Cup in 2006, holds a special place in the Italian football imagination. The prospect of returning to the last 16 of Euro 2024 is so exciting that one commentator stumbled over his tongue. Fabio Caressa breathlessly repeats “goal” [Fabio] Grosso! It was almost as iconic as the player’s semi-final goal 18 years ago, which left him incoherent and unable to speak for a moment after Mattia Zaccani’s equalizer against Croatia on Monday.
Caressa had no trouble finding her words after the game on Saturday night. Azzurri In the end, they lost to the Swiss team 0-2 and were eliminated. “The way we played tonight was unacceptable,” Caressa told Italian broadcaster Sky Sports’ post-match discussion. “We have to be able to say that. This game was simply unwatchable… This is not the level of our national team.
His thoughts were echoed in Sunday morning’s newspapers. The front page of Corriere dello Sport lamented “embarrassment” and used a subtitle to describe the national team’s “inability to play football.” Gazzetta dello Sport called it a “national failure”, while Gazzetta dello Sport called it “everything needs to be rebuilt”.
The only disagreement is over who should be responsible for the rebuilding effort. Spalletti made it clear at the post-match press conference that he hopes to continue coaching, stressing that he had only been in charge of the national team for 10 games before this World Cup.
However, his stated intention to find players better suited to his football vision has not gone down well with some viewers. “A good tailor will tailor a suit to the client’s measurements,” writes Luigi Garlando of La Gazzetta dello Sport. “They’re not going to impose it on them.”
In addition to Italy’s poor performance on the pitch, Spalletti’s interactions with the media this week have led some to question whether he has the right temperament to lead the national team. At 2 a.m. on Tuesday, he called a reporter to apologize for using vulgar language when he accused him of leaking information about the locker room.
“Anyone who has followed Luciano Spalletti’s adventures from the beginning knows how much passion he devoted to this undertaking,” Galando wrote in the same article. “Maybe it was too much love that led him to make so many mistakes.”
Italy’s starting line-up against Switzerland made six changes compared to the side that drew with Croatia. Some of that was forced, with centre-back Ricardo Calafiore suspended and left-back Federico Dimarco missing through injury. Others, such as the choice to put Stephan El Shaarawy ahead of Zaccagni, are more difficult to understand.
Spalletti said player fatigue was a reason for Italy’s poor performance in the group stages, but he still picked Brian Cristante and Gianluca Mancini, both of whom have starred for Roma this season. Played half a century (mostly starts). Nicolo Fagioli has fresher legs but the choice to bring in a player who has started a competitive game after completing a seven-month layoff is bold for more obvious reasons.
Spalletti isn’t the only one receiving criticism. Back in the Sky Sports studios, former Juventus and England manager Fabio Capello pointed to Italy’s lack of talent, saying: “I think Spalletti overestimates this team. He There are ideas, he wants to play in a certain way, but this is the quality of the players we have and this is the energy they have. If Italian clubs go further in Europe, it is because we get foreign players. Players help.
Newsletter Promotion Post
For Italian audiences, it felt like Groundhog Day. Discussions about the need to overhaul the system for developing young talent have been repeated since at least 2010. AzzurriThe then-defending champions also crashed out of the World Cup group stage, and Arrigo Sacchi was appointed technical coordinator to oversee the national youth teams. In 2014, he resigned, citing “too much pressure.”
The outlook is not all bleak. Italy won the Men’s Under-19 European Championship in Malta last summer and some of the team’s players, such as Fiorentina right-back Michael Kayode, have begun to break through in the top flight. Injuries have deprived Spalletti of several talented young players, including Tottenham Hotspur’s Destiny Udoji and Atalanta’s Giorgio Scalvini.
However, consecutive failures to qualify for the World Cup, coupled with a crushing defeat against Switzerland, have left the country with difficult questions to answer. Italy’s win at the last European Cup was no accident – success in every tournament depends on form and luck, but it’s worth remembering that they created a 37-match unbeaten run under Roberto Mancini. record. A year later they also finished top of their Nations League group against England, Germany and Hungary.
Has the landscape changed so unrecognizably since then? Or is this summer’s disaster more a result of a coach who lost his way? There were some encouraging elements in the opening win over Albania, but every game since has felt like a step backwards, or sideways at best.
The only thing everyone agrees on is that Saturday represents a new low. “In 18 years of commentating for the national team,” Caressa said, “I have never seen a game as bad as this.”
