To the notebooks of today’s edition of Gazzetta dello Sport, Fabio Capello analyzed Italy’s defeat against Spain: “Without beating around the bush: it was a bad fall against Spain. But we can get back up. Qualification for the round of 16 is there, at one point, and Croatia will offer us the opportunity for redemption. The mission is within our reach, as long as we keep in mind a couple of concepts that emerged from the defeat in Gelsenkirchen. The gap comes from afar, because in our country quality is no longer cultivated: football schools teach it tactics but not technique and this is the long-term result.
I trained in Madrid, I know well the way football is taught and experienced in Spain: the best moment of training is the rondo, the bull, and not because you joke and relax, but because the challenge is make as little mistakes as possible and technique rules. In Italy, in recent years, many have taken Guardiola as a model, but the Guardiola of ten years ago, while Pep himself was evolving and looking forward.
The misunderstanding has led to today’s limits: our players almost never take responsibility for playing the ball forward or risking a dribble. We ended up confusing good play with sterile ball possession. The good game, however, is that of current Spain, here is the model to follow. A model in which Nico Williams, at 21 years old, explains that he always targets the opponent because ‘it’s the coach who asks me to’.”