The unravelling of Luciano Spalletti leaves Italy with huge problems but no solutions
Italy manager Luciano Spalletti seemingly had no answers to the issues his side faced (AFP via Getty Images)
After the ill-fated start to Italy football’s campaign, it was a bizarre end. Were the Azzurri, Luciano Spalletti was asked, a Fiat Panda and Switzerland football a Ferrari? “You have to accept everything, even rather tasteless allusions like yours,” said the Italy manager. “You are clearly a wonderful exponent of sarcasm.” With that, he asked his interrogator’s name, smiled and took his leave.
From Euro 2024 but not, seemingly, from the Azzurri job. Italy’s worst European Championships for 20 years will not prompt Spalletti to resign. Rather, his inquest arrowed in on what he believes the failings are in Italian football, the types of players they do not possess and which they need. He did it while claiming he was not picking on the footballers he believes have produced two sub-par performances in a competition that only brought them one win. “There is no blame to anyone, I want to stress this,” he said. “The responsibility for what happens is mine.”
It was a noble attempt to spare others criticism. Yet there may be a truth: perhaps Spalletti and Italy are a mismatch of an impossible ideal and a relatively prosaic group. Euro 2024 showed a side that was less than the sum of its parts, where they only scored three goals, where the most recent and spectacular of them, from Mattia Zaccagni in the 98th-minute against Croatia, spared them a group-stage exit only to become the first team eliminated in the last 16.
Spalletti believes Italy need more physicality. He also thinks they need more pace, especially at the back. They lack the speed to win one-on-one duels. They do not have the acceleration of a Ferrari, even if they could go from zero to 1-0 down in 23 seconds against Albania. He thinks he has added reasons for revolution now. “I come away with the notion I have to change things,” he said.
But his Euro 2024 was one of ambition, compromise and confusion. A byword for elegant attacking finished with his side mustering a lone shot on target against Switzerland. Over four games, he swapped systems and personnel. He wasn’t sure whether to play with a back three or four, to bench Jorginho or build his midfield around him. He made too many changes – six for the loss to Switzerland alone – and yet erred on the one occasion he named an unchanged team, for the defeat to Spain. He doesn’t have the footballers to play his brand of football and failed to prove he could play a different way. He is the purist, but maybe Italy needed a pragmatist with a realist focus on maximising the resources at his disposal.
Certainly, as Spalletti has the most prestigious post of his long career, he does not have the most incisive attack. Compared to his Napoli, he has no Victor Osimhen, no Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. His finest Roma sides were built around the glittering talent of Francesco Totti.
Now the great Italian supply of No 10s has dried up; Lorenzo Insigne was a throwback to the days of Totti and Alessandro Del Piero, Roberto Baggio and Gianfranco Zola, Sandro Mazzola and Gianni Rivera, but he has had no successor. Nor is there a classic No 9: a Luca Toni, a Christian Vieri, a Gigi Riva. Italy has not mastered the modern trend of inverted, goalscoring wingers. Across the tournament as a whole, their greatest goal threat may have been the centre-back Alessandro Bastoni.
The quest for balance at the heart of the team eluded Spalletti. Nicolo Barella may be, along with Gianluigi Donnarumma, one of only two world-class players in this squad but losing Sandro Tonali altogether and with Nicolo Fagioli barely playing this season due to gambling bans, Spalletti’s midfield was a pale imitation of Cesare Prandelli’s 2012 quartet of Andrea Pirlo, Daniele de Rossi, Claudio Marchisio and Riccardo Montolivo.
Defensively, Spalletti merits some sympathy. Unlike Roberto Mancini in 2020, he could not call upon Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci. Even they could not carry on forever. Spalletti lost Destiny Udogie, Francesco Acerbi and Giorgio Scalvini before the tournament, the injured Federico Di Marco and the banned Riccardo Calafiori for the Switzerland game. Calafiori had been the revelation of Italy’s tournament, a player the manager cited as proof of his faith in youth. He was missed.
Moreover, Mancini handicapped his successor with the timing of his departure. “All of the other coaches had 20 games in charge before, some had 30, I only had 10 and we had to win,” Spalletti said. “This is part of a process where I need to get to know players.”
That should continue into World Cup qualifying: he has a contract until 2026. Yet if Spalletti can identify the problems, he has offered scant proof he has solutions. The nature of international management is that a coach is limited in who and what he can select. But, while Euro 2024 painted a bleak picture, Spalletti’s impotent side may have suggested the Azzurri are more starved of gifts than they actually are. Internazionale are one of the finest club sides on the continent; Serie A sides have reached a host of European semi-finals and finals. Spalletti’s Italy, however, came to look a class below Switzerland.
The architect of Napoli’s seismic Scudetto has damaged his reputation this campaign; irrational tirades and silly paranoia can often be forgiven in victory but looks still more ludicrous in defeat. “My passion is symptomatic of the utmost respect I have for everyone,” said Spalletti. If that is not how it appeared, Italy may take fond memories of Barella and Zaccagni’s goals and Donnarumma’s saves from Euro 2024. But the danger is it is recalled for the unravelling of Spalletti.