Manuel Locatelli will not defend the European football championship won in 2021 with Italy. The midfielder comes from two less than brilliant seasons, this beyond the recently won Italian Cup, and for this reason the technical commissioner Luciano Spalletti has decided not to include him in the list of thirty pre-summoned elements who will meet at the end of May in Coverciano and will begin prepare the defense of the continental title taken from England in the famous final won on penalties on the legendary Wembley pitch.
According to what was revealed by La Gazzetta dello Sport in today’s edition, the news of the missed call-up was brought forward to the Lecco-born midfielder by a phone call from Spalletti, who rightly preferred not to leave the unpleasant task to cold institutional communication. Once the list was made public, Locatelli released one dark story on their Instagram profile, credibly linked to the news itself.
Italy is preparing for the 2024 European Championships
The countdown towards Euro 2024 has now begun. In fact, the tournament is only about twenty days away and the participating national teams are gradually starting to announce the lists of players called up and pre-called up. Among these also Italy, who will present themselves at the starting line as reigning champions: the technical commissioner Luciano Spalletti, as previously mentioned, has in fact announced the 30 players called up for the Coverciano meeting, set for May 31st.
Euro 2024, where to watch the matches on TV and streaming: dates and times
Italy Euro 2024 pre-summoned, those excluded and those present
Among those excluded, the name of Ciro Immobile stands out, who over the last few years has long been the point of reference for the Azzurri attack. An absence, that of the Lazio center forward, however in the air: Immobile, in fact, has just returned from a season that was anything but exciting, with just seven goals scored in the championship. And his failure to be called up, therefore, may be surprising up to a certain point, “even if, it must be said, players were called in his place (such as Retegui and Raspadori) who didn’t do much better, at least in terms of scoring” . Also out, regarding the offensive department, are Lorenzo Lucca, Matteo Politano and Moise Kean, with the latter who, over the course of the last year, “did really too little to deserve a call up”.
The failure to call Manuel Locatelli is causing a stir: “A choice that may well be there, given that the former Sassuolo player has repeatedly shown some limitations, but which is difficult to reconcile with the simultaneous call of Nicolò Fagioli, who has just returned from disqualification for illicit bets – explain the colleagues of Today.it -. Beyond a moral significance (certainly not positive to convey the message that everything is immediately forgiven, especially when talking about the national team), the decision to call up a player who has not seen the field for practically a year is perplexing: there really is no ‘were elements more deserving of a chance? For example, the names of Giacomo Bonaventura come to mind, a player who is no longer very young, certainly, but with a certain reliability, and Matteo Pessina, a profile capable of guaranteeing a certain offensive danger.”
In defence, however, the biggest surprise is the exclusion of Federico Gatti, now a regular at Juventus. “But it had long been a non-remote hypothesis that the Bianconeri could be excluded, just as it had already been clear for some time that no call would come for Davide Calabria, who never ended up in Spalletti’s good graces. Riccardo Calafiori, however, earned a place at the last minute, and was rightly rewarded for his high performance during the season wearing the Bologna shirt.”
Finally the goalkeeper question. Here, probably, a call would have been deserved by Marco Carnesecchi, Atalanta’s goalkeeper who has shown exponential growth in recent seasons. But his time, we are sure, will come soon.”
