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Gelsenkirchen – The look is resigned, wounded; the click pen nervously squeezed over and over again in his hands while he is speaking, as if while reviewing the (horror) film of this Spain-Italy, Luciano Spalletti wanted to rewrite the plot, the development, the ending with each frame. And yet we need to start again from here, because our European Championship already gives us (so to speak) a final, the one on Monday in Leipzig against Croatia. All to play for, with an Italian group that will now have to demonstrate that they know how to get back up from this black night, where what hurts (and it’s the worst thing), more than the result, is the performance.
There’s no going back
A gamer, by conviction and vocation, Luciano Spalletti is and will continue to be. Even Monday in Leipzig, but when something (and someone) will change, by force and necessity. But the main path of the game (perhaps with a 3-5-2 more suited to the men available and the result of the championship) will not change. “Convincing the players becomes easy. We probably recovered badly from what was the heaviness in terms of importance of the tournament. There was too much difference from a point of view of brilliance – explains the coach with a prostrate look -. It’s not that we can go and talk about other things, it’s the basis. If you don’t have the same leg as others you can’t make choices with the same reaction times. If you don’t have this brilliance and you are staid in front of an opponent who has technical quality like them, you lose clarity, any possibility of reaction. At the base this was highlighted, that they had a leg beyond the technical qualities of Williams and Yamal who have above average speed. The reaction times were different and this leads you to be the victim of re-aggressions, to miss countless easy passes that we missed but have the same denominator which is the freshness of the legs.”
Short leg
But where do these rhythmic steps and empty lungs come from? Here begin the doubts and regrets, the worst traveling companions towards Leipzig. “Maybe I should have let them recover more, give them more recovery days because we gave them a day and a half – Spalletti tries to argue -. And it was seen that it was the right choice in terms of evaluations in monitoring with GPS, but the difference was clear, we were always long, we never shortened the spaces inside and they created problems for us even beyond the result, there is no point in beating around the bush . We did more on verticalisations, but there was too much frenzy. We were never short or played fluid football. When we recovered the ball we had difficulty playing it, after recovering it we immediately called it into question. And we missed easy passes that can’t be missed.”
Another level
He wanted to see the level of this Italy, the technical commissioner, who seems to almost disappear now in that jacket whose elegance and style he had magnified the day before. Seeing this Spain is a bit like the Italy that they would like to see in the future, which however seems far away, too far away from what we saw at the Schalke Arena. “Everyone would like to copy Spain as a way of playing. I must be able to make people understand the importance of playing the game on equal terms. If you put yourself up there against these teams it becomes very difficult in the long run – he adds laconically -. We need to overturn the concept of the team, the mentality. You could make a running team that doesn’t dribble and give the ball to others, but it’s not a type of football I like to play and it’s difficult for me to even teach it, because I don’t know how to do it. I’m the least suitable person to do that. We need to go back to playing the ball like we did in the last two games. And trying to take the ball ourselves. We were long as a team, not very reactive, not very capable of making early choices on where we had to take this ball. I was expecting an attempt to do something more, but then the fact that the legs work less affects her a lot. And that is the reason that needs to be put back in place, everything else comes as a consequence.”
Consequences
Now we need to immediately put the pieces back together, reinvent without destroying what good has been done in these ten games (it should not be forgotten) of Spalletti’s management, catapulted onto the Azzurri bench certainly after the phenomenal year of the tricolor in Naples, but above all after the traumatic divorce between the FIGC and Roberto Mancini. “The match said that they were a team and we didn’t succeed. A match that they deserved to win regardless of the goal difference – the coach openly acknowledges -. We have never been involved in the game and created correct situations to compete with football at this level.”
Individuals in the balance
Then obviously you will have to think about the many, too many individual performances (or rather counter-performances) that are completely insufficient. “If you give away some players it becomes a double difficulty. But it’s clear that it was the whole team, beyond the sub-level performance of 2-3 individuals, it was the same in several players. And even when we tried to play the game there were always staid, long reactions. Raspadori and Retegui pressed more and harder and we recovered a few more balls by playing in their half of the pitch.” And even more doubts, second thoughts: “I had to change something because of what we saw. But it didn’t depend on just two players, with 4-5 fresh players we could have fit together better.” But what is also worrying is the submissiveness, the lack of aggressiveness, almost the awe of many Azzurri in the presence of a strong, accomplished and mature team. What Italy is not today, and what it will have to try to be already on Monday.
