The six football commandments pinned to the whiteboard at the Italian Coverciano training base before they left for Germany made no mention of PlayStations or headphones. What they listed instead was a set of guiding principles for how the European champions should defend their title on the pitch.
1) Press continuously. 2) Control of the game (ball management). 3) Tied together (distances between teammates: short, close). 4) Savage reaction (when the ball is lost). 5) Recomposition (go back to your places). 6) Order, study and prepare (to move on).
Related: Team guides for Euro 2024 part seven: Italy
But as the European champions prepare to open their title defense against Albania on Saturday, there is less fuss about Luciano Spalletti’s tactical ideas than his policies on when and how players use their electronic devices.
A mock image of the manager in Thursday’s edition of La Gazzetta dello Sport showed him holding up an alternative list of commands, which included restrictions on when players could use their phones and a ban on players walking around with a headphones on and “a stupid look”. on their faces” – a direct quote from Spalletti, albeit not a new one. He discussed this rule in Coverciano last October.
The PlayStation ban is more recent. In March, Spalletti told reporters he believed at least one player had not slept before Italy’s decisive final qualifying match against Ukraine because they had stayed up all night playing video games. “That’s not okay,” he said. “It’s not the two hours we are on the field that shows who we are, but the 22 hours on either side.”
Spalletti never mentioned names, but his decision to omit Gianluca Scamacca – used as a substitute against Ukraine – from his squad for friendlies against Venezuela and Ecuador set tongues wagging. Il Corriere di Bergamo, a local newspaper of the player’s club, Atalanta, described him as a “PlayStation fanatic”.
Maybe it was the jolt Scamacca needed. He finished the season in brilliant form, with 12 goals and four assists in his last 19 appearances for Atalanta, including a pair of strikes against Liverpool at Anfield. At a press conference in Iserlohn this week, Scamacca said: “Spalletti did the right thing not to take me to [the friendlies in] the United States. I didn’t deserve it.”
The striker complimented his club’s manager, Gian Piero Gasperini, and Spalletti for pushing the right buttons to help him get back to his best. “I would like to emulate the 2021 Italian team that won the European Championship and the 2006 team that won the World Cup,” he said. “Those are my examples.”
Few outside the Italian camp tip them to go that far. This is a very different Italian team to the one that broke English hearts at Wembley three years ago, with no more than four of the players who started the final likely to be in the eleventh place to face Albania .
Gianluigi Donnarumma, named player of the tournament at Euro 2020, remains the first-choice goalkeeper, while Nicolò Barella and Jorginho should both start in midfield as long as the former is fit. Giovanni Di Lorenzo’s place in the defense is less certain. Federico Chiesa, a breakout star at that tournament, is present but even less assured of a place after three seasons between injuries.
The indications from Italy’s two warm-up matches are that Spalletti has not yet settled on his formation, using a back four against Turkey and then 3-4-2-1 against Bosnia and Herzegovina. Who can blame him for not having all the answers yet? Spalletti has only been in the role since last August, after being called up for what was supposed to be a relaxing sabbatical after winning Serie A with Napoli, replacing Roberto Mancini, who resigned in the middle of a qualifying campaign.
Including friendly matches, Spalletti played 10 matches to get to know the players. There are questions everywhere on the field.
Who should start at centre-back alongside Alessandro Bastoni after his Inter teammate Francesco Acerbi was ruled out through injury? Italy has promising talent on the rise, from Bologna’s Riccardo Calafiori to the late-rising Alessandro Buongiorno (Atalanta’s Giorgio Scalvini missed the ball after tearing a cruciate ligament), but none of the certainty that Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci offered last time.
Spalletti surprisingly called up Juventus’ Nicolò Fagioli in midfield after a season in which he missed 33 games due to a gambling ban and played him in the warm-up matches. The positions behind the attack are also up for grabs, with Chiesa competing with Davide Frattesi, Lorenzo Pellegrini and Michael Folorunsho.
Then we come to the attack. How should the manager weigh Scamacca’s recent form against the fact that he has scored just once in 16 appearances for the national team? He is the latest in a long line of centre-forwards who have struggled to perform for the Azzurri in the number 9 role over the past decade.
Mancini caused some debate when he called up Mateo Retegui last March, a Tigre striker who had lived in Argentina all his life but qualified to represent Italy through his grandfather. He scored on his debut for the Azzurri and then joined Genoa, where he has established himself well without emulating Scamacca’s prolific club form. Retegui has been more productive at international level, although four goals in eight games is a small sample size.
Spalletti’s choices could be influenced by what he sees from players now that they are together every day. Some reporting about his restrictions on devices has been exaggerated: PlayStations are not banned, but limited to a set of shared consoles in the team game room. Above all, his emphasis has been on encouraging players to weigh their responsibilities.
“I think it can be an advantage to come to a tournament like this as the reigning champion,” Spalletti said. “But we must immediately understand that we have to behave like reigning champions. Italy has chosen us to represent our nation. We will only see when the Games start whether we can handle that task.”