Italy put World Cup misery behind them to qualify for Euro 2020
Y
ou have to hand it to
Roberto Mancini, the
national coach who
qualified Italy well
ahead of time for
next summer’s Euro
2020 Championship
thanks to a 2-0 victory over Greece.
While it could be argued that winning
a group that contains Finland, Bosnia,
Greece, Armenia and Liechtenstein
is no great shakes – and what you
would expect from the four-times world
champions – what must be remembered
is Mancini began this qualifying campaign
from the back of the grid.
Just 23 months after the most
humiliating international night in recent
Italian history, when a goalless draw with
Sweden meant missing out on Russia
2018, Italy are back at the top table of
world football.
Mancini has only been in the Italian
hot seat for 17 months, but in that time
he has forged a side that equalled the
Azzurri’s all-time record of nine straight
wins with a 5-0 victory in Liechtenstein
and secured a spot at next summer’s
extravaganza with three games to spare.
The opposition is what it is, but youcannot do better than to beat them
all – and beating them at times with
sparkling football. That is, of course, until
the game against Greece, when the new-
look Italy rather ground to a halt in the
face of a dour Greek side going through
its own dark night of the soul.
In the four qualifiers prior to the
Italy game, Greece had lost at home to
both Italy and Armenia, had lost away
to Finland and, most disappointingly of
all, drawn 1-1 at home to Liechtenstein.
That string of bad results saw former
Holland international John Van’t Schip
brought in to replace Angelos Anastasiadis
as coach.
Clearly, Van’t Schip’s priorities are
about getting the ship back on an even
keel and his policy at the Olimpico in
Rome, understandably enough, was to
limit the damage as much as possible- reflected by the fact that Greece
played almost all of the game in their
own final third and Italy recorded 71.1
per cent possession.
Faced with the entire Greek side lined
Roberto Mancini
up 30 yards from goal, Italy struggled to
find any sort of rhythm and managed to
create few real chances.
In the end it took a handball from
defender Andreas Bouchalakis to break
the deadlock, with Jorginho coolly slotting
home the 63rd-minute penalty.
Federico Bernardeschi, who had comeon as a 39th-minute substitute to
replace the injured Federico Chiesa,
wrapped up the contest in the 78th
minute with a shot from outside the
area which, due to a possible deflection,
appeared to catch keeper Alexandros
Paschalakis off guard.
In the end, Italy were deservedHeadliners
Delight...Lorenzo
Insigne (left) and
Jorginho“We’ve managed to build this side in
a very short time...all I did was try to
make them believe in their abilities”