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The SWR Television Tower in Stuttgart looms more than 700ft high. On a bright summer’s day, it is possible to see for miles around.
Landmarks include Stuttgarter Kickers’ old ground, the Stadion auf der Waldau, where Switzerland are training. But the side of the viewing platform overlooking it has been roped off to prevent anyone with a telescopic lens from watching their sessions. The Swiss are particularly sensitive to spying. In Dusseldorf the laptops of three match analysts were stolen from the team hotel. The theft, a member of the Swiss FA said, has not impacted preparation for the upcoming match against Italy.
Murat Yakin, the debonair Swiss coach, did not seem hacked off. Far from it. Only seconds away from defeating hosts Germany in their final group game, he projected understandable confidence. “We don’t want to worry too much about Italy,” Yakin told SRF. “The opposite is true because things are working well for us.”
The same can’t be said of Italy. Luciano Spalletti claims he has been under pressure ever since his first game against North Macedonia last September. Their opponents that night in Skopje were the same foes who stopped the Azzurri from going to the World Cup in Qatar.
The ghosts of that play-off semi-final, a harrowing 1-0 stoppage-time defeat in Palermo, were everywhere. But it was only necessary because Switzerland automatically qualified from the group at Italy’s expense. Domenico Berardi fluffed a one-v-one in Berne. Jorginho missed penalties home and away. Potential wins became disappointing draws.
(Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
Those were the small margins behind Italy’s absence from Qatar. They led Giorgio Chiellini to retire from international duty. They depressed Spalletti’s predecessor Roberto Mancini, who never got over them. Bereft of his friend, the late Gianluca Vialli, he drifted through Nations League games and Euro qualifiers, before quitting in controversial circumstances to take the Saudi Arabia national team job. No one dumps Miss Italia but that’s what Mancini did.
Spalletti has tried to pick her up. After nine months together there’s still a lot to figure out. Italy landed in Germany a work-in-progress and a work-in-progress they remain. The only constant has been captain Gigio Donnarumma whose goalkeeping has stopped wins from turning into draws (Albania) and defeats from becoming humiliations (Spain). “We haven’t yet been able to show our best football or rather, at times, we have but we haven’t been able to sustain that over time,” Spalletti said.
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Riccardo Calafiori, one of the revelations of last season in Serie A and this European Championship, has gone through a lot in a short space of time. After impressing against Albania, he scored an own goal against Spain and then, at the end of a marauding run, assisted Mattia Zaccagni’s 98th-minute equaliser against Croatia. Uncapped by his country until the pre-tournament warm-ups, his suspension for the Switzerland game is, all of a sudden, keenly felt.
As summer temperatures belatedly rise in Germany, Spalletti is sweating on his defence. Roma’s enforcer Gianluca Mancini will replace Calafiori. But his centre-back partner, Alessandro Bastoni, a colossal figure for Italy, has been suffering from fever. “We’ll look at him tomorrow morning,” Spalletti said. “Bastoni did a portion of the training session today (Friday). We thought he might be able to resolve it but he had a bit of a setback.”
Federico Dimarco is out. The left-back wasn’t expected to start against Croatia after training away from the team. But he kicked the game off and lasted an hour. Three quarters of the defence from the first two games could well change. The quarter that doesn’t is Giovanni Di Lorenzo, who got ran over by Spain’s Nico Williams in Gelsenkirchen.
In midfield, Spalletti has admitted that if Italy can’t manage possession as a team then Jorginho suffers. “He probably was under par against Spain,” Spalletti said. “But it all comes down to how well the team is able to play as a whole. It’s not Jorginho’s fault. It’s my fault.”
Nicolo Barella has taken on more playmaking responsibilities than usual often operating on the left to accommodate his understudy at club level, Davide Frattesi, on the right. Barella missed all of the pre-tournament preparation and few people expected him to make the starting XI, let alone put in a man-of-the-match performance against Albania.
Frattesi, meanwhile, has been reprimanded more than any other player from the sidelines. Sky in Italy has a camera trained on Spalletti throughout every game. “DA-VI-DE, get out of the traffic! DA-VI-DE!” he regularly shouts. The blonde midfielder was Italy’s top scorer in qualifying and until centre-forwards Gianluca Scamacca and Mateo Retegui begin finding the back of the net, his third-man runs behind the defensive line remain the team’s most potent attacking weapon. Frattesi’s goalscoring instincts and ability to vibe off childhood friend, Scamacca, are one thing. His reading of the game is another and continues to be a source of frustration for Spalletti.
All this could mean a shake-up in midfield with Bryan Cristante and the silky Nicolo Fagioli, fresh back from his seven-month ban for betting on football, expected to play next to Barella. Spalletti has resisted the temptation to start Fagioli, a player he believes to have a tremendous career ahead of him. But his cameo against Croatia has only caused the temptation to grow.
(Alex Pantling – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
Out wide, fans would like to see more natural, attacking width and an out-an-out winger over Lorenzo Pellegrini, a No 10, starting nominally on the left. But Dimarco is there to do exactly that and Pellegrini instead performs a valuable linking role between the lines. He is one of four Italy players on four chances created, flicking on or, in a hitherto unexplored part of his game, knocking down balls for Scamacca.
Pellegrini is also by far the best set-piece taker on the team either from corners or free kicks. And yet, Zaccagni’s dramatic cameo against Croatia might entice Spalletti to be bolder and more direct on the left, particularly now Italy can’t count on Dimarco’s propulsion down that flank. But Spalletti, who has only named the same starting XI twice in his tenure (the first two group-stage games), seems inclined to make Stephan El Shaarawy the 20th player to appear for Italy in four games.
Chiesa was dropped for the last game as Spalletti dusted off the 3-5-2 he experimented with in three of their last four friendlies before the Euros. Most of the players operate that way for their clubs, particularly the core from Italian champions Inter Milan, on whom the national team leans more than ever, and there’s a case for mirroring Switzerland who set up in a back three too. An extra centre-back (Matteo Darmian) was supposed to bring greater security after the confidence-denting defeat to Spain. But Italy fell behind for a third straight game. The system was also designed to spark Italy into life in attack with a new forward pairing of Retegui and Giacomo Raspadori.
(Dan Mullan/Getty Images)
The diminutive ‘Raspa’ started five of Spalletti’s first eight games in charge. They know each other well from Napoli where he scored arguably the biggest goal in their first title since 1990, a winner away to Juventus. He created three chances against Croatia, coming short, as is his penchant, and switching the play. Retegui, as was the case with Scamacca against Albania, rattled off three shots. But Italy’s strikers remain goalless. “That’s the only question mark I have,” Spalletti said. The No 9 is still the number one problem he has to resolve as he leans towards a 4-3-3 with Chiesa and El Shaarawy either side of his forward.
Here’s that possible starting line-up:
(4-3-3): Donnarumma — Darmian, Mancini, Bastoni (if fit), Di Lorenzo — Fagioli, Cristante, Barella — Chiesa, Scamacca, El Shaarawy.
Spalletti believes the Azzurri should have beaten Albania by a greater margin and that they created enough chances to deserve qualification at Croatia’s expense. He highlighted Barella’s cross for the header that Bastoni thumped at Dominik Livakovic and the inches Scamacca found himself away from turning in Chiesa’s pull-back.
Fine margins, again. The sort that made the difference the last time Italy and Switzerland met.
(Top photo: Alex Pantling – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)