Fabio Caressa had been an easy prophet of misfortune ten years ago, when he foreshadowed a gloomy scenario for Italian football. The Azzurri had just been eliminated in the first round from the 2014 Brazilian World Cup, the last act of Prandelli’s management: it seemed like an accident, but instead it was a clear indication of the sensational decline of the entire national football movement. In the aftermath of the mortifying elimination in the round of 16 of the European Championships at the hands of Switzerland, that old film about young Italians undervalued in football schools has gone viral again on the internet. But the person directly concerned, rather than looking to the past, tries to decipher the future.
Euro2024, Italy flop: cold analysis by Fabio Caressa
In a video released on his YouTube channel, the Sky commentator launches into what he calls “a cold analysis”. Frank, thoughtful, but no less cutting for that. “It was a humiliating match and I don’t want to hear excuses like that Italian football lacks young people”, begins Caressa. “At these European Championships we were not the oldest and we lost to Switzerland. There are evidently other reasons behind this knockout. Structural, because new things have been announced for years that I haven’t seen. And technical-tactics.” The popular voice on Sky perhaps expected an act of responsibility: “Resigning is not running away. It means acknowledging your mistakes, they are not due or even necessary, but they are an awareness. A very respectable institution”.
The prophecy of 2014 and the situation today: football schools
For the commentator, the problem of too many foreigners in the youth teams is a false one: “The foreigners problem has existed since the Bosman Act, but others have it too. And ours isn’t even an old national team. I wonder: How many have the money to send their children to soccer schools? The question is legitimate, because if the answer is what I fear, the first selection becomes a social selection and this is not admissible. Second question: football schools must produce footballers and not tactics. Enough with the philosophers, let’s only talk about tactics and no longer about technique. Without technique you can no longer make players. If we lose against Spain it’s because we never get Yamal and Nico Williams. In Spain in the youth teams they focus on technique, not tactics. We need scholarships, financial aid, free federal schools.”
Caressa presses Spalletti: here are the coach’s most obvious errors
Chapter Spalletti: “He didn’t adapt and he knows it too, I think he became aware of it the night after the elimination. The national team is not a club team, you have to work in a short time, faster and on other principles, be more practical. You also have to change the preparation probably. You learn from mistakes, but the problem is not to rejuvenate, to renew. Serve a different working approach because it’s a different kind of job. Even all these changes: changing the module takes away the players’ convictions. And then too many spectacularizations. The 10 in Coverciano seemed useless to me, and so did the values: no playstation and then you call Fagioli? I love the boy, he paid and rehabilitated himself, but he played 10 minutes this year. He is not a phenomenon”.
Will Italy go to the World Cup? Caressa’s response is disarming
The synthesis is quite clear, according to Caressa who even risked choking himself for the national team at the European Championships: “Structural problems must be addressed once and for all. I want to be sure that the best young players can play regardless of their economic situation. Spalletti, who is an excellent coach, must learn that the profession is different, foreigners in the youth sector and the lack of time are excuses. You have to adapt more than adapt when you are a coach of the national team. With these things will we be able to go to the World Cup? I don’t know, we’ll have to see how things change. But it will be enough to stop looking for excuses, alibis and to have understood the direction to go”.
