Spalletti’s Italy has no style and no substance

Italy head coach Luciano Spalletti reacts during the UEFA Euro 2024 Group B football match between Croatia and Italy at the Leipzig Stadium in Leipzig on June 24, 2024. (Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS / AFP) (Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP via Getty Images)

The latest non-performance in Norway proves Luciano Spalletti is wholly unsuited to the role of Italy coach, writes Susy Campanale.

There was a sense of impending doom about the Italy camp going into Oslo. Even if you weren’t expecting them to be 3-0 down by half-time, the end result was still not entirely surprising in the circumstances. And this is why Luciano Spalletti simply is not the right man for this job.

With all the comments coaches make about needing to be part tactician, part psychologist, you forget that this is an essential part of the role and one that becomes much more difficult when you only have a few days to work with the players. Spalletti always was rather heavy-handed with his idea of man-management, as seen in the Francesco Totti debacle at Roma. Even though Napoli won the Scudetto, don’t forget they started to risk fumbling it in the final weeks when he poured on the syrup about it meaning the world to a whole city, generations of whom had never experienced a title success.

Spalletti too heavy-handed with fragile Italy

You might not realise this because we translate it all, but Spalletti has a very odd speaking style that is frankly infuriating. He talks and talks while saying practically nothing at all, spewing out words with no real sentences, leading to confusing and often conflicting messages. In the build-up to the Norway match, he both declared players “understand the importance of this match” and that they should “play without pressure.” He had to pick one and ended up doing neither. And that is his approach to this Italy tenure in a nutshell.

He changed his tactics from 4-3-3 to a 3-5-2 in order to reflect the players at his disposal and their usual positions at club level. That is good. He then failed to adapt when most of those players were unavailable due to various reasons, meaning once again square pegs were rammed into round holes, the system dictating the shape rather than the characteristics of his squad. That’s bad. The focus remains on dominating possession, but they forget the purpose of keeping the ball is to create scoring opportunities. We saw none of those in Oslo.

Spalletti had very similar statements before the embarrassing non-performance against Switzerland in EURO 2024 and that is what the defeat to Norway most resembled. It goes beyond tactics, player picks, even motivational speeches. This is a team that disappears into the ether, like a half-remembered daydream. It has no substance, nothing at all to fall back on when the going gets tough.

Italy must acknowledge changing landscape

Let us also not beat around the bush here. This is a severely weakened group of players to be choosing from, so the fact we went into Oslo with a debutant Hellas Verona defender and a right-back in a three-man defence, with Davide Zappacosta making his return to the Italy squad after seven years, is a genuine concern.

Francesco Acerbi’s temper tantrum did nobody any favours, including him, but the one bright spot we can take from the 3-0 defeat is that Diego Coppola can be relied upon. He was probably the best player on the pitch for Italy last night.

It was unsurprising the Inter players were still visibly traumatised from the Coppa Campioni Final mauling, so while giving them the opportunity to make up for it felt like an idea in principle, any good man-manager could see they were just going to crumble at the first setback. Piling yet more pressure on them was unfair and bound to backfire.

This is a football nation that has been left in limbo by recent events. Italy are one of the great soccer schools, lifting four World Cup trophies, winning the European Championship as recently as 2021. At the same time, they have now failed to qualify for two consecutive World Cup tournaments and at this rate severely risk making it a hat-trick.

We need to find a coach who can restore some sense of identity and purpose, because right now, there is none. This Azzurri side is floundering in uncertainty, unsure where it belongs on the world stage, or even just on the pitch.

Spalletti was the only available option when Roberto Mancini flounced off seeking Saudi Arabian money, but wholly unsuited to the role. He might be starting to realise that too.