Don’t be fooled by the final 1-0, the fact that the match – ultimately – was only decided by an own goal by Riccardo Calafiori. Spain-Italy gave us the real value of our national team and the sensations eight months later are very similar to those felt last October after the defeat at Wembley against England. Luciano Spalletti’s Italy is a team that doesn’t want to give up the game, that always wants to play with its weapons. But now as then, as soon as we find ourselves in front of a five-star team – one of the favorites – all the limitations of a team that is not of that level emerge. Which loses clarity and precision when the intensity and quality of the opponents increases.
The Spain seen tonight is probably the Italy that Luciano Spalletti would like. A parallel which, in the press conference, the technical commissioner did not shy away from, responding as follows: “Everyone would like to copy Spain in terms of the way they play, they’ve been playing well for a long time. I have to be able to make people understand the importance of playing the game on equal terms, because if you put yourself there in the long run you’ll lose it. and then you have to overturn the concept of the team. You have to make a running team that doesn’t dribble but this is not a football that I like to play, it’s difficult for me to even teach it, I’m the least suitable person to do that. We have to replay the ball as a matter of fact in the last two games and try to take the ball into our own hands. Tonight we were long as a team, we were not very reactive and not capable of making early decisions. In this respect I expected an attempt to do something more , but I believe that the legs influenced this match a lot and that is the thing that needs to be fixed, everything else is a consequence.”
CLICK HERE for the full press conference Luciano Spalletti.