Luciano Spalletti’s abrupt sacking leaves Italy with much reflecting to do

Sports

add

It was professional and dignified, absurd and unprecedented.

Luciano Spalletti appeared for his pre-match press conference on Sunday afternoon. He sat down with the forlorn hope of at least taking a couple of questions on Italy’s opponents Moldova and the line-up he had in mind for the game in Reggio Emilia. One did come — about the compatibility of strikers Mateo Retegui and Lorenzo Lucca, and whether Bologna winger Riccardo Orsolini has it in him to play false nine. But it was tokenistic. Spalletti knew the only line of inquiry regarded his future.

An hour before he was due in the auditorium at Italy’s training base in Coverciano, a newsflash made it clear this would be a press conference like no other. Sky Italia’s yellow ticker reported the breaking news of Spalletti’s intention to resign after the Moldova game. It was true he was leaving. But it turned out reports of his inclination to quit were false. Spalletti had already been sacked by Gabriele Gravina, the president of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC).

It was a bizarre scene. Why was Spalletti still in charge? Usually in these cases, a statement is released, an interim coach promoted and the floor handed to Gravina to explain the decision. But Gravina had already spoken in Parma at the Festival della Serie A that morning. He had eulogised Spalletti as “extraordinary, a noble soul… the finest person I’ve ever met in football, a gentleman”. Not only for accepting the job in the first place but the way he took the news of being relieved of it.

Spalletti’s wish had been to continue after Friday’s defeat by Norway in Oslo when Italy found themselves 3-0 down at half-time. The 66-year-old did not want to go out like that, and so an awkward compromise was reached whereby he would get to put Italy back on course in their World Cup qualifying campaign — something he achieved with a 2-0 win over Moldova on Tuesday — and then graciously break his contract without seeking a payout and return to his vineyard in the rolling Tuscan hills. Unless Juventus or Fiorentina decide to make him an offer in the coming weeks, Spalletti will finally get to have the sabbatical he left Napoli to go on in 2023.

Spalletti was on his farm, La Rimessa, when Gravina picked up the phone and dialled his number that summer. He had just led Napoli to their first league title in 33 years and wanted more time with the family. But his country called, and Gravina would not take ‘no’ for an answer. He was desperate and rightly considered Spalletti the best man for the job.

Roberto Mancini had quit — supposedly after having second thoughts about the reshuffle of his staff imposed on him by the FIGC. Mancini was instead clearing the way to accept an offer from Saudi Arabia, a decision he now regrets. ‘Mancio’ did not leave Spalletti a great inheritance. He left Italy with little chance of catching England in their qualifying group for Euro 2024. They had lost to Gareth Southgate’s side in Naples and Spalletti was immediately under pressure to beat Ukraine to the runners-up spot.

An extreme generational transition was under way, too. Barely anyone from the team that had become European champions in 2021 remained. Giorgio Chiellini had retired after Italy failed to qualify for the World Cup in Qatar. Leonardo Bonucci was in his twilight and, after an acrimonious divorce from Juventus, ended his career at Union Berlin and Fenerbahce. Arsenal’s signing of Declan Rice cut Jorginho’s minutes. Marco Verratti, still only 32, was in Qatar. Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Bernardeschi moved to Toronto FC. Leonardo Spinazzola struggled to come back from the snapped Achilles he suffered nearly four years ago, while Ciro Immobile — the most prolific striker of his generation in Italy — later followed Bonucci to Turkey and joined Besiktas.

Spalletti, in other words, had to figure a lot out in a short space of time. Drama was never far away. The police interrupted one of his first get-togethers after a paparazzo, Fabrizio Corona, blew the whistle on a betting scandal that led to long-term bans for Sandro Tonali and Nicolo Fagioli.

Qualification for the 2024 Euros was not straightforward either. Ukraine, for instance, believed they deserved a penalty in the 93rd minute of a 0-0 draw, crying foul after Bryan Cristante took out Mykhailo Mudryk. The tension was unceasingly high. Italy’s group at the Euros featured Spain and Croatia. A soft opener against Albania in Dortmund was instantly complicated by the sort of mistake Federico Dimarco repeated in this season’s Champions League final. Although Italy came back to win, Spalletti had doubts about the same XI’s ability to cope with Spain’s speed and intensity. Nevertheless, he tried to play them at their own game a few days later.

Rather than adapt according to his gut feeling, he treated the game as a test. His team not only flunked it as he had foreseen, but their confidence in his game model was also shattered. Spalletti found himself in a difficult position. In order to play at the rhythm he considered necessary to compete, he had to rotate. But wholesale change looked punitive, and change was also the enemy of chemistry. A vicious cycle began.

In Leipzig, Italy dramatically made it to the knockouts with a 98th-minute equaliser against Croatia. It was a moment of euphoria and had the potential to re-energise the group and make the players believe again. Rather than enjoy it, Spalletti went on a mole hunt in the press conference that followed, seizing on an apparently innocuous question about a pact between him and the players, which he considered a damaging leak from inside the camp.

Elimination came shortly afterwards against Switzerland in Berlin. It was one of the most insipid and emotionless performances ever put on by the national team at a major tournament, the opposite of Italy’s display at the same stadium in 2006 when they last won the World Cup.

There were, unsurprisingly, calls for Spalletti to go, and he was memorably offended by a foreign journalist who likened the Swiss to a Ferrari and his Italy to a Fiat Panda. Italy’s head of communications was told to make a note of the reporter’s name for future reference.

Gravina rightly felt Spalletti deserved more time. He had only been in the job nine months and had got to work with the players just once in 2024 (the March international break) before the tournament started. Vindication seemed to follow quickly.

Italy fell behind after 14 seconds in their first game back after the Euros. Bradley Barcola caught out his club team-mate Gianluigi Donnarumma, who was still wrapping up his gloves at the Parc des Princes. But Italy came back and won 3-1, winning in France for the first time in 70 years. The style with which they played that night also matched the initial expectations of what Spalletti might be able to achieve with the Azzurri.

Tonali was back from suspension. Samuele Ricci made the midfield more cerebral. Andrea Cambiaso looked like the picture of a modern hybrid footballer. Strikers Retegui and Moise Kean were beginning to score. Not even the anterior cruciate ligament tears suffered by Gianluca Scamacca and Giorgio Scalvini could stop the blossoming of a new era.

Two-nil up against Belgium, only a Lorenzo Pellegrini red card allowed their opponents back into the game to snatch a point. Had Pellegrini stayed on the field, Italy perhaps would have won their Nations League group instead of finishing second on goal difference to France, who beat them 3-1 in the return game at San Siro. It meant playing Germany, not Croatia, in the knockouts.

Italy would take the lead in that game at San Siro but lost, and were 3-0 down at half-time in Dortmund, only to stage a heroic but ultimately futile comeback to make it 3-3 on the night. Overall, Spalletti’s Italy reflected the worst febrility of his nature, and little of his genius. In the end, this is what disappointed him most.

A year ago, in the debrief after the Switzerland debacle, he acknowledged a leadership deficit in the post-Chiellini-Bonucci era. His hope was that players like Riccardo Calafiori would fill it. Spalletti wanted others to follow Tonali and Calafiori to the Premier League. Federico Chiesa swiftly did; however, he only started once for Liverpool in the Premier League. Heralded as Italy’s next big thing after his goals against Austria and Spain at Euro 2020, Chiesa was overhyped and then badly injured. He has not lived up to expectations.

Spalletti has instead had to build around a core of Inter players. One of the excuses he made for Italy’s performance at the Euros last summer was that Inter won the league too early and had lost match rhythm going into the tournament. This week, the same players were, by contrast, exhausted after a 59-game season which ended without a treble or a trophy, and with the scars of a 5-0 defeat by Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League final.

That Friday’s qualifier against Norway came only six days after Munich shows how relentless the football calendar is today. The Champions League has been expanded. The Nations League is bigger. A Club World Cup awaits. Is it any wonder Inter’s players look dead on their feet?

Alessandro Bastoni was the one who gave the ball away and played Alexander Sorloth onside for Norway’s first goal. The second from Antonio Nusa was a worldie. The third figured as the end for Italy and Spalletti, who had not helped himself in the build-up to the game by falling out with Francesco Acerbi, the veteran defender. Spalletti had called him out at the beginning of the international break for not answering a call-up.

Antonio Nusa’s goal contributed to Norway’s heavy win over Italy on Friday (Lise Aserud/NTB/AFP via Getty Images)

The wisdom of clashing with a centre-back who has reserved his best performances for Erling Haaland — at a time when Calafiori and Alessandro Buongiorno were out injured — was questionable, as was picking a fight with someone close to the other senior players in the Italy squad, although Spalletti emphatically denied losing the dressing room.

When asked if he had been betrayed, Spalletti paused and read out the names of the FIGC executive team in a thankful tone. He then got up and left. The auditorium applauded. The press appreciated his honesty, his self-criticism, the way he fronted up and held himself accountable above anybody else.

Spalletti could undoubtedly have handled some situations better. His adaptation to international football was not seamless and his uncompromising ways made life harder. On the one hand, Italy have underperformed relative to the talent available. On the other, the talent is still not what it was in the 1980s and 90s — even though Italy are the current under-17 and under-19 European champions and finished runners-up at the last Under-20 World Cup.

It is still early days in qualifying for next year’s World Cup. Italy have played two of eight games and while overhauling Norway looks difficult, it is not impossible. That said, changing coach is not enough on its own to restore the national team to greatness. The system must change too.

And yet the system seems to think everything is fine. Gravina was recently re-elected president of the FIGC with 98 per cent of the vote. When Italian football looks at itself in the mirror, it still apparently likes enough of what it sees to keep the status quo.

After all, there were five Italian teams in the Champions League this season, a reward for finishing first in the UEFA coefficient. But the national team remains a source of dissatisfaction, and reflection is needed.

More cracks are appearing in the mirror and if missing one World Cup was bad luck, failing to qualify for three in a row would be something else.

 (Top photo: Alessandro Sabattini/Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

Share on

email

Previous

trending_flat

The history of the sash, a football shirt status symbol

Sports

Next

trending_flat

Inside Mamelodi Sundowns: The journey to the Club World Cup

Sports