Article 9 — Euro 16 & World Cup 18
The debacle of World Cup 2014 meant it was back to the drawing board for the Italian FA, Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio (FIGC). Cesare Prandelli had overseen a period of great promise from the time of his appointment in 2010 despite the lack of talent that was coming through.
Antonio Conte who had done so well to lead a period of rejuvenation and return to success at Juventus after their dark post-Calciopoli period was appointed to lead Italy in the hope that he would lead a similar rejuvenation and success for Italy.
Italy was in the same group as our bogey team, Croatia but Italy navigated the group without losing to the Croatians, drawing both games. Conte got Italy up and running again, getting them to imbibe his typically intense playing style. His constant gripe was that logically he didn’t have as much time with the players as he had when he was at Juventus to be able to get the players to understand his ideas better. Italy made it out of the group top of the group, 4 points clear of the Croatians.
Conte faced the same issue as his predecessors in that there was a lack of youth talent coming through and he had to make do with the tools available to him to ensure that Italy is not embarrassed again. He could rely on the Juventus bloc that he had developed in his time at the club in terms of personnel and formation.
Gianluigi Buffon was one of only 2 survivors from 2006 and one of the rare world-class players in the squad. An important component of the squad was in central defence, the BBC pairing of Leonardo Bonucci, Andrea Barzagli and Giorgio Chiellini which is where the foundation of the team was built on.
Andrea Pirlo had announced his retirement from international football after the disastrous 2014 World Cup but came back into recognition for the qualifiers of Euro 2016. Pirlo, who at this time was based in USA was left out of the final squad for Euro 2016 together with another in-form player based in the US at that time, Sebastian Giovinco.
The most exciting young talent coming through into the national team, Marco Verratti missed Euro 2016 due to injury. Antonio Conte left out another exciting player in naturalised Italian, Jorginho from the squad after naming him in his preliminary squad.
There were first international tournament call ups for promising youngsters, Federico Bernardeschi, Simone Zaza, Stephan El Shaarawy and Alessandro Florenzi. Lorenzo Insigne kept his place in the squad after his debut international tournament inclusion in 2014. In the constant theme for late bloomers in the Italian national team, Graziano Pelle had now emerged as a starting striker alongside another late bloomer and naturalised Italian, Eder.
Italy was in the same group as one of the teams tipped to be dark horses of the tournament, the talented Belgian team, Sweden and for the 2nd European Championship in a row, Ireland. Italy’s first match was a tough one against Belgium. The Belgians were favourites but Italy has always shown a knack of upsetting the odds in international tournaments.
They produced a tactical, united and spirited performance containing the Belgians and posing a constant threat on the counter-attack to keep the Belgians occupied at the back. Italy sealed the win in injury time when Pelle scored for a 2–0 win.
The second game against Sweden as was a tradition for Italy in international tournaments turned out to be tougher than expected. They didn’t play as well as they did in the first match. However, they refrained from dropping any points when Eder produced a mirror image of Baggio’s 2nd goal against Bulgaria in the World Cup 1994 semi-final to score the winner with 2 minutes to go.
Italy sealed qualification after 2 games in the group and rotated the team for their final match against Ireland which they lost 0–1. The result had little bearing for Italy as they qualified top of the group but it allowed the Irish team a passage into the 2nd Round as one of the best 3rd placed teams in the group stage.
In the 2nd Round, Italy was in the tougher bracket in the passage to the final. They were against Spain in a repeat of the Euro 2008 quarter-final and 2012 final. Italy has not had a very good recent memory of their matches against Spain who as I mentioned in Article 8, was now a thorn in my sight. Spain was no longer the imperious, all-conquering team of 2012. They were eliminated from the group stage in the 2014 World Cup and had qualified from their group in 2nd place.
Italy rose to the occasion in this match to produce a tactical performance of high quality, taking the game to the Spaniards and deservingly led 1–0 in the first half. For the rest of the match, the threat of the Spaniards was neutralised. Whatever Spain could muster in terms of efforts on goal were saved by Buffon or handled by the defence. Italy sealed the win again in injury time through Pelle.
Italy’s reward was a quarter-final against another powerhouse, the reigning World champions, Germany. Germany has never beaten Italy in any competitive international fixture but that meant little to the pundits who tipped Germany as favourites. Once again, Italy employed the same tactics of soak and counter. Germany matched Italy in terms of formation as they have seen Italy get the better of Belgium and Spain who used a 4 men defence.
Italy was without Antonio Candreva but more telling was the absence of the experienced, Daniele De Rossi, one of the best Italian players in the squad. Germany caused Italy more problems than Spain and it looked like they would break their hoodoo against the Italians but were denied by some miraculous defending by Florenzi and goalkeeping by Buffon. Germany took the lead through Mesut Ozil after a smooth team move. Italy got back into the game after a crazy handball in the penalty area by Jerome Boateng. Up stepped an unlikely player for the penalty, central defender Bonucci, thankfully he placed his spot-kick past Manuel Neuer who guessed right but couldn’t keep the penalty out.
The match went into extra-time and neither team could find a winner. The match had to be decided by a penalty shootout and Germany is renowned for their successful track record on penalty shootouts. Italy had to hope that for once, Germany got it wrong on the shootout and luck would favour them. Germany was not at their best for a change in the shootout but unfortunately for Italy, so were they. Germany just edged it 6–5, committing one less mistake in the shootout than the Italians.
Italy left the tournament in the quarter-final stage with their heads held high beating much-fancied Belgium in the group stage to qualify top of the group, knocked reigning European champions Spain out of the tournament and ran World champions Germany close bringing the game all the way to the penalty shootout. Italy’s campaign at Euro 2016 would be remembered for highly spirited, intense and passionate displays on the pitch and off it exemplified by the way the national anthem is sung before every match.
Nobody expected Italy to do as well as they did and had they got a kinder knockout bracket, they might even have gone all the way to the final. My criticism of Conte would be that had he been braver and gambled a bit to tinker with his formation as Marcello Lippi did in the semi-final of 2006, Italy might have beaten Germany in the quarter-final before the match even got to the dreaded penalty shootout. Although I do acknowledge that the Germany of 2016 was stronger than that of 2006 and had caused Italy quite a few scares in the game but as the saying goes, luck favours the brave.
Antonio Conte had already decided to leave his post as the manager of the Italian national team at the end of Italy’s Euro 2016 campaign preferring a return to club football instead with Chelsea in England.
Veteran Italian manager, Gian Piero Ventura was appointed to replace Conte on the back of a successful period with Torino, guiding them from Serie B to Europa League quarter-finalists in 4 years.
Star player Verratti made his return to the team, Ciro Immobile who was culled from the Euro 2016 provisional squad returned, Andrea Belotti who made a breakthrough under Ventura for Torino and was viewed as one of the upcoming, young talents was called up. Bernardeschi and Insigne were two young ones that didn’t find much space in the Euro 2016 squad found space under Ventura.
Italy was in the same group as Spain for the 2018 World Cup because they found themselves in Pot 2 for the draw of UEFA 2018 World Cup qualifiers. Italy was in Pot 2 due to their poor results in international friendlies causing them to drop in the FIFA rankings.
Italy started well in the qualifiers including a 1–1 draw against Spain just 4 months after beating the same opponents convincingly in the 2nd Round of Euro 2016. It was not a result to sneer at considering the strength of Spain. Things changed when they played Spain in the reverse fixture in Madrid.
Ventura, played an ultra attacking 4–2–4 losing control of the all-important midfield battle to the midfield masters of Spain. Spain took full advantage, dominated the game and avenged their elimination in Euro 2016 with a 3–0 win. With that result and performance, criticism grew on the Italian team and especially the manager.
It was unlikely now that Italy could now qualify automatically, their prospects made worse by Italy’s 1–1 draw at home against Macedonia. Italy would now need to navigate a playoff against Sweden to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. Sweden hosted Italy in the first leg and increased the pressure on Italy with a narrow 1–0 first-leg win.
Italy had the advantage of playing the second leg at home but the pressure was well and truly on the home team. In-demand Jorginho who was largely ignored during the qualifiers was selected for the playoff matches. He didn’t play in the first match, under pressure Ventura selected him for the second match.
Italy and Ventura had no idea how to break the Swedish team down. The young players lacked big-game experience and Italy didn’t have quality players to make the difference in the final third. The pressure on the team told. Lorenzo Insigne, who was in good form and much-vaunted was left on the bench. Ventura wanted to throw De Rossi on instead as a last throw of dice but was met with incredulous defiance by the veteran who called for Insigne to be sent on instead.
The match ended 0–0 and Italy failed to qualify for the World Cup for the first time since 1958. If we thought failing to qualify out of the group stage in the last 2 World Cups, 2010 and 2014 was humiliating and embarrassing than this failure to qualify was the absolute humiliation for the 4 times World Champions. It wasn’t even like Italy was eliminated by a better team. There have been better Swedish teams and this team hardly did much to warrant a win. They scored the vital goal while Italy failed to score which meant Sweden qualified.
A proper black spot on Italy and Italian football, a dark page in Italy’s history.
