Let’s go home in the most inglorious way possible. Not because Switzerland is the one eliminating Italy, but because everything happens on an evening that offends what remains of the history and coat of arms of a nation that lives on football and is now getting used to losing. Always and badly. With the only extraordinary exception of the European Championship which is now history. Italy leaves the scene humiliated by Switzerland. Don’t be fooled by the small forcing that produced a post with Scamacca when the Swiss closed to protect the double advantage.
Italy lost without ever entering the game, dominated in organization in all areas of the pitch, beaten in every department and a man-against-man duel. Betrayed by its key players (Donnarumma aside), but also and above all by the choices of a coach who launched yet another turnaround by repudiating the module that had saved us against Croatia, throwing Jorginho overboard to focus on Fagioli – inadequate to the task and the context -, stacking attackers and wingers when the situation proved to be compromised. All without a logical thread and, what’s worse, without even the sensation of an emotional shock.
Luciano Spalletti should be thanked for having picked up the national team abandoned by Mancini in the heart of last summer. He didn’t have the time or opportunity to work on a technical project, but this risks becoming an aggravating factor in the process which inevitably opens up on his contribution to this unfortunate trip to German soil: we have never had an identity that was lost in the whirlwind of experiments, changes and revolutions that accompanied the four matches. The balance sheet is disheartening: a victory against Albania, a last-gasp draw with Croatia and two painful defeats for the way they came against Spain and Switzerland.
There are those who will ask for the head of the coach and those (many) who will attack Gravina and the Football Federation. In the first case, anything can be decided, but it must be clear that the solution cannot always be to start from scratch and, ultimately, Italy must be acknowledged for having emerged from a very tough group within a European Championship which in the first phase seen disappointing many of the big or presumed big names. For the second question, it’s sports policy stuff. That this national team had many enemies was made clear by the coldness with which the trip to Germany was accompanied.
The camp said that we didn’t deserve more than this, that there is only one champion (Donnarumma) and some excellent players who arrived, however, out of condition and also not employed in the optimal way. The rest is a prayer: that the results achieved by our Under teams in the last two years are the promise that something is changing. So it’s agony. Slow and irreversible.
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