In the aftermath of the victory against Albania, theItaly by Luciano Spalletti immediately returned to the pitch at the Hemberg Stadion in Iserlohn for a training session which featured those players who did not take to the pitch at the BVB Stadion in Dortmund from the first minute. He trained for the entire training session Nicolò Fagioli, director of a team that re-proposed that 4-2-3-1 deployed by the coach for the debut match in this European Championship with excellent results. Unloading work for Dortmund’s starters: a quarter of an hour of running on a secondary pitch and then in the gym.
In the hours following Italy-Albania 2-1, Gianluigi Buffon, head of the Azzurri delegation, spoke and commented on the match as follows: “We have shown that we are a balanced national team that has awareness, with a shocking start that could have destabilized even a certain type of belief, we continued to play and grind out the game. As the coach said, our strength is to cling to the game, we deserved the victory by far. The coach always tries to make the most of what he has available, sometimes he uses the stick, sometimes the carrot, I think they are inevitable tools when you have to get the most out of the boys.”
Then on the comparison between Lippi and Spalletti, Buffon added: “There is a lot of similarity. For example in the management of men and the group, there is a moment in which it is nice to be a friend, but sometimes you have to make it clear that you are a commander, these two alternating things must be there if you want to be protagonists to the end.”