What remains at the end of Italy’s European Championship is a feeling of total bewilderment. Of confusion. How did this Italy team play? Who were the starters and who were the reserves? What were the game plots Luciano Spalletti was aiming for? And what was his reference form? So many questions to which the field has not given an answer. We approached this competition with the exaggerated ambition of being able to do everything, in the illusion of flexibility and ‘we are all number 10’. We ended it knowing that we never found an identity.
Yesterday, after the match, Spalletti spoke about energy that wasn’t there, he focused on his precarious physical condition. However, Bryan Cristante’s explanation is more convincing: “When you see that there is so much difference in organization and play, the energy also disappears”. What made the difference in the Berlin match was above all the organization of the game. On the one hand, a Switzerland with a very specific identity, on the other, an Italy that has never understood who it really was. On the one hand, a cohesive, compact group, with clear ideas on how to attack and how to defend. On the other, a team without points of reference.
Luciano Spalletti arrived at this European Championship having tested both the three-man and four-man defense. The match against Albania had deluded him into believing that the 4-2-3-1 was the right formation to approach the competition and he proposed it again, with the same men, against Spain: a total disaster. In the following training sessions, however, he continued to focus on the back four, only to then opt for the 3-5-2 two hours before the kick-off of the match against Croatia. The approach was encouraging, but then in Leipzig Italy went behind and in the second half Spalletti changed formation again. Having passed the group thanks to a goal in the 98th minute, the coach continued his three-man defense tests in the following days but then – on the eve of the match against Switzerland – he returned again to the four-man defence. This time with a more robust midfield and two active wingers: in Berlin Italy (did not) take the field with the 4-3-3. Yet another module and another defeat: the final one. All in general confusion: did anyone understand how this Italy played?