Born in Naples on 10/03/88, graduated in Philosophy and Politics at the Oriental University of Naples. He has been working for TMW since 2008, he was deputy director for 10 years. Correspondent following the National Team
But since when did we decide that the National team should be a starting point and not a finishing point? Since when did the identity card become the fundamental element around which to rotate the call-ups? The post-elimination press conference of Luciano Spalletti and Gabriele Gravina, in addition to having confirmed that one failure (or even two) is no longer enough to take a step back, has given us the new advert for the Italy to come: “We will start again with the young people”. Which means everything and means nothing, but it is always in fashion and in a moment of difficulty it always seems like the right phrase to say. It seems.
There is a lot of rhetoric and there are many clichés around the topic of young people. There is above all a detail that escapes or that we pretend not to see: we are talking about the National team, which is not a club or an Under through which to experiment. A coach should not valorize the players so as to help the club sell them for three times, a CT trains his players for too little time to have an impact. The national team selector must optimize everything that surrounds him, he must put together the best that there is and then put it in the best possible conditions to obtain the maximum. After our triumph at Wembley, we decided that we had to do exactly the opposite. Palermo’s nightmares and the failure to qualify for the World Cup should have brought with them a clean slate, everyone’s resignation. But instead, nothing: Gravina, to confirm himself in the Barbera press room, confirmed the technical commissioner and at the start great proclamations. Announcements of resounding reforms and radical changes declined with the slogan ‘We will start again from the young’.
It was May 2022. On that occasion, Roberto Mancini moved from words to deeds by calling 53 boys to Coverciano for an internship: from Sorrentino to Vicario, from Zortea to Fagioli, from Franchi to Udogie. For a few days, the Federal Technical Center was transformed into a summer camp and some of those players – after the clear defeat at Wembley against Argentina – were rewarded by returning to the national team group for the four Nations League matches in June. They were Matteo Cancellieri and Alessio Zerbin, Salvatore Esposito and Wilfried Gnonto, players who were not ready to wear the National A jersey and who in fact, once the publicity had worn off, naturally returned to the back lines. The former coach who made the mistake of not resigning after Palermo from that moment on entered a tunnel with no exit. The following December he brought 69 players to Coverciano to: “Facilitate the transition from the youth teams to the senior national team and broaden the base of selectable players in view of Italy’s next commitments”. Needless to say, it was useless… Those who were supposed to have a career did so, those who weren’t supposed to did not. Surely this idea of ’accessibility’, of a national team within the reach of even those who have three appearances in Serie A, has completely overturned the scenario. It has taken away the sacredness of a shirt that has transformed from a point of arrival into a point of departure.
Roberto Mancini has not brought anything good out of this mix of young players to showcase and results to achieve, he has entered a dead end that the current coach is also getting into. Luciano Spalletti, who in this European Championship made every mistake he could make, instead of taking a step back the day after the collapse in Berlin, decided to relaunch himself with a slogan that he will then have to take into account, such as ‘We will start again with the young people’. He did it thanks to the interested support of Gabriele Gravina who now cannot afford any shocks because soon – on November 4th – the FIGC president will be elected and he could, despite everything, run again for a third term. Speeches, reasoning and plots that inevitably involve the National team, which set limits that everyone will then have to take into account. Especially Spalletti.