21 games unbeaten, Vialli kissing a football: welcome to Tik-Italia
James Horncastle
November 16, 2020
Robert Lewandowski stopped in his tracks and cursed. The best striker in the world was frustrated. He had barely touched the ball all night. His solitary effort on goal came late on, a desperate and unsuccessful attempt to lob Gigio Donnarumma from the halfway line, motivated perhaps by the need to save face after he suffered the indignity of being nutmegged by Domenico Berardi. It summed his night up.
Italy outclassed Poland in a way that was consistent with their overall trajectory under Roberto Mancini. The team has been on the up since that night in Genoa a couple of autumns ago when things clicked for the first time against Ukraine. The Azzurri won 11 consecutive games, surpassing the landmark established under double World Cup-winning coach Vittorio Pozzo and qualified for the Euros with a perfect record. Expectation has risen accordingly and yet it is still a pleasant surprise to witness Italy playing with this style and grace.
There is no one on the Ballon d’Or shortlist pulling the strings in midfield or banging in the goals up front. No single virtuoso for fans to hang their hopes on. Not yet anyway. Mancini can’t count on a player like himself and has not found an heir to Roberto Baggio or Francesco Totti. But Italy don’t lack quality and that was obvious in Reggio Emilia.
It shone through in Nicolo Barella’s now-trademark volleyed backheel passes and the balletic roulette Manuel Locatelli performed to elude a trio of gnarly Poles. When the ball ran out of play, Gianluca Vialli knelt over to pick it up and instinctively gave it a kiss before tossing it back for a throw-in. The poignance of his gesture, both personal and universal, wasn’t lost on anyone. This game can be restorative. It lifts spirits and, on quite a literal level, Italy is a nation that loves its football. This team does too and that feeling climaxed in the 30-pass move for Berardi’s goal. Tik-Italia eat your heart out.
As was the case against Holland in Amsterdam two months ago, Italy’s supremacy was unquestioned. Poland failed to muster a single shot on target and the presence of Lewandowski did little to intimidate a defence shorn of its captain Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci, whose voice still reverberated around the Mapei stadium.
The veteran withdrew from the squad on the eve of the game with an adductor injury but wanted to stick around and lend his support from the sidelines on Sunday night. “Who takes my place will put in a great performance,” Bonucci predicted and the mightily impressive 21-year-old Inter centre-back Alessandro Bastoni duly delivered on his second cap. The culture, the strong identity to Italy’s play and the range of options available to Mancini justified Bonucci’s confidence. “In this shirt you always know what you have to do,” he said. “You feel at ease. I’ve never seen a group of players as united as this.”
Even players who are struggling to impose themselves at club level like Chelsea’s Emerson Palmieri and Bonucci’s Juventus team-mate Federico Bernardeschi seem changed by whatever it is in the air at Italy’s training base on the outskirts of Florence. “Sto da Dio” was how “Berna” described the experience after scoring in last week’s 4-0 win over Estonia at the Artemio Franchi. “I’m in my element.”
Things have undoubtedly gone better than anticipated this international fortnight. While the Azzurri would ordinarily be expected to beat Poland at home the disruption to their preparation felt extreme even for the unprecedented circumstances of the present. Mancini has had to manage the team remotely after testing positive for COVID-19 on the eve of the get-together. Vialli, Attilio Lombardo and Fausto Salsano have taken it in turns to be on the phone with him during games, jotting down whatever thoughts he has on the game and then relaying them to his assistant, another former Samp team-mate, Alberico Evani.
Only 18 of the 41 players he called up for November’s round of international fixtures were able to attend the first day of training at Coverciano. Angelo Ogbonna dropped out through injury, debutante Pietro Pellegri and Moise Kean flew back to France before the Poland game, Roberto Gagliardini returned an inconclusive PCR test, Bonucci begrudgingly concluded: “I’ve asked too much of my body” over the last month, and the spine of Mancini’s full-strength team was effectively out.
Marco Verratti didn’t join up with the squad, the Golden Shoe winner Ciro Immobile is still caught up in Lazio’s testing fiasco, Federico Chiesa stayed in Turin with a muscle strain and local health authorities stopped Roma and Fiorentina’s internationals from participating too. A lack of continuity can short-circuit any team and so the Poland game, in particular, was a test not only of how much Mancini has embedded his ideas into the squad as a whole but the way this current generation of Italy players has been raised at youth level under the auspices of technical coordinator Maurizio Viscidi. The players change but the principles remain the same and the unbeaten record extends to 21 games. Instead of making excuses for a depleted team and complaining about the international calendar, Italy’s focus was total for a couple of reasons.
The win over Estonia ensured they now have the ranking points necessary to be a top seed when the draw for World Cup qualification is made. Italy found themselves in Pot 2 last time round and ended up in the unenvious position of a group with Spain. The route to Qatar should, as a consequence, becomes slightly easier than it was for Russia 2018. Sunday’s victory in Reggio Emilia also sent Italy top of their Nations League group and leaves them in control of their destiny ahead of Wednesday’s game against a Dzeko-less Bosnia in Zenica. If everything goes to plan, the Azzurri could earn the right to host their first senior tournament since 1990 with Milan and Turin slated as possible venues for the next Nations League finals. Whatever you think of the competition, it’s still something to aim for, even if the rescheduled Euros carry greater weight.
While the overwhelming sense of progress is indisputable, Mancini is still yet to find a definitive answer to one question in particular: who can be relied upon to lead the line for Italy and turn convincing performances into blow-out wins? It’s a year since Andrea Belotti scored for the national team and Immobile hasn’t found the net for his country since last December’s 9-1 win over Armenia. Granted, there haven’t been many international fixtures since then but it is a concern that the only striker to find the net for the Azzurri in 2020 is the late-blooming, home-brewing Ciccio Caputo of Sassuolo. Encouragement is to be found in Kean’s form in Paris but for now a more regular source of goals is coming from midfield.
“We have six to eight of the highest level,” Evani said on Sunday. “If we’re missing one it makes no difference.” This international break was a case in point. No Verratti. No Stefano Sensi. No Lorenzo Pellegrini. No problem. There’s Barella, Locatelli, Sandro Tonali, Gaetano Castrovilli and the experience of Jorginho. Perhaps Nicolo Zaniolo will be back in time for next summer. The Azzurri have an abundance of skilful and dynamic pass and movers. It’s cause for serious optimism. Three years on from that disastrous night against Sweden when Italy failed to qualify for the World Cup for the first time in 60 years, the improvement has been exponential.
Quizzed on whether they’re ready to compete with France, Spain, England and Germany, Evani was coyly bullish. “Honestly we’re not looking at anybody else,” he said. “We’re focused on ourselves. But we’re not that far off. From now until June we’re going to use this time to keep getting better and close the gap.”
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