The interpretation cut out and Luciano Spalletti didn’t get the translation from the German. The Italy coach asked the reporter to repeat the question. It came back different from the original but the interpreter back at the International Broadcasting Centre remembered it word-for-word. “Were Switzerland a Ferrari tonight and Italy a Fiat Panda?” Spalletti does not suffer fools gladly. He spent the press conference after the 1-1 draw against Croatia in a verbal joust with a journalist about the word “pact” under the assumption players were leaking information to the media.
When the full Italian version of the question finally made it into his ear, Spalletti stared down from his desk and said: “You’re a wonderful exponent of sarcasm.” Two can play at that game. He raised a sarcastic thumbs up. “You’re right. What more can we say. You have to accept anything, even rather tasteless allusions like yours.”
You also have to accept calls for your resignation too. Spalletti still spoke in the future tense when he talked about Italy. “The results have said that we need to change things. That’s been the footballing verdict and I’ll be forced to do so,” he said matter of factly.
The end of the holders’ title defence at this European Championship doesn’t necessarily mean the end of his nine-month tenure. Retaining it always seemed ambitious, unrealistic. This tournament was supposed to be about taking strides forward before the upcoming qualifiers for the World Cup, a competition Italy haven’t qualified for in a decade. Instead, Italy went backwards. They only won once and that win came against Albania. They fell behind in all four games. Strikers Gianluca Scamacca, Mateo Retegui and Giacomo Raspadori all failed to score. The defence didn’t work. Nor did the attack.
Spalletti’s future will be decided on Sunday (Masashi Hara/Getty Images)
Italy have undoubtedly experienced far worse results than Saturday’s 2-0 loss to Switzerland. It will not go down in ignominy like Korea in 1966 or, more recently North Macedonia in 2022. But what about the performances in Germany? The timid and vapid display at the Olympiastadion was bad. But was it as bad as against Spain in Gelsenkirchen? “If we failed, we failed, and we failed because of my team selection and in terms of how I conducted myself,” Spalletti said. “It’s never down to the players.”
Apart from when it is.
While the 65-year-old reprimanded himself for working the players too hard between the Albania and Spain games. Since then he has prioritised freshness. He made six changes against Switzerland. He started Gianluca Mancini, Bryan Cristante, Stephan El Shaarawy and Nicolo Fagioli for the first time at the Euros in Italy’s biggest game. Three of them are Stakhanovites for Roma who have gone deep in European competitions for three consecutive years. The other, Fagioli, missed seven months of the season serving a ban for betting on football and, beyond the odd flash of youthful exuberance, lacked match rhythm.
As a result, Spalletti’s team looked as sluggish as they did against Spain. The tempo of their opponents was too high. Italy couldn’t set or sustain it themselves. They couldn’t press as high as he would have liked because of a lack of pace at the back. All of which is evidenced by the GPS data he reviews after every game, every training session.
“It also came down to how our league season ended,” Spalletti reflected. Inter ran away with Serie A. They won the Scudetto with five games to spare. Unsurprisingly Spalletti has leaned heavily on the Italian champions when selecting his squad. “They are a very professional serious club because Simone Inzaghi kept training the team in a certain way,” Spalletti said. “I was in touch with how often they were training, but perhaps you’re not unconsciously as applied when you’ve won the league so early. A couple got injured too.”
He lamented the casualties of the spring, in particular, Destiny Udogie, who would have been an energetic alternative to Dimarco. Others missed the Euros through injury; Francesco Acerbi, his most experienced defender, Nicolo Zaniolo, one of a long line of next big things that didn’t live up to the hype, and Domenico Berardi, who has scored more than 100 goals in Serie A.
Fitness was undoubtedly an issue for the Azzurri. But what about strategy, a forte of this manager? Spalletti has bristled at suggestions his line-ups were ad hoc. The systems Italy deployed in Germany were worked on in qualifying, as well as friendlies in the US and warm-ups against Turkey and Bosnia. But never with the same personnel. Every time Italy played it looked like the first time. There was little chemistry. There weren’t enough patterns of play.
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The only player who emerged with any credit was the skipper and goalkeeper Gigio Donnarumma, who turned prospective humiliations into relatively dignified defeats. Donnarumma was one of the players who had listened to Gigi Buffon tell stories about winning the World Cup at the Olympiastadion in 2006. They were supposed to serve as inspiration. But Italy lacked it in 2024.
“Is this who we really are? Donnarumma mused. “For me, no.” And yet Italy have lost World Cup play-offs to Sweden and North Macedonia. The Euros in 2021 appear, in retrospect, to be a glorious exception.
But they weren’t. Italy were in the midst of a record-breaking 38-game unbeaten run. They had a clear identity. Roberto Mancini knew his best team. Spalletti doesn’t. “We didn’t see a team that’s defined,” he conceded. “I need to get to know the players better.”
His future will be defined on Sunday when he appears beside the Italian Football Federation’s president Gabriele Gravina at a special press conference at their training base in Iserlohn.
(Top photo: Claudio Villa/Getty Images for FIGC)
