Italy’s national football team is facing a difficult rebuilding process after recent failures on the world stage, but the positive signs shown in October’s matches point to a long road ahead. Roberto Mancini, a coach known for his courage and intuition, has taken charge of this process. He has a proven ability to recognize talent, even when his colleagues may overlook it, as shown by the long list of players he has promoted. This tendency should become a guide for his second mandate, with the goal of reaching a European Championship more dignified than the last one, led by Spalletti. No one is asking Mancini to repeat the miracle of Wembley in 2021, but a consoling resurrection, yes, that is being asked.
In Italian football, betting on young players, those around twenty, is rarely an act of love or a clear programmatic vision; more often it is a cocktail of survival and despair. Our history is an eternal and stubborn “déjà vu.” After the shameful experience of the 1974 World Cup in Germany, Fulvio Bernardini opened the doors to dozens of new faces, ignoring judgments and prejudices. At that time, these young players, called up by the dozen, looked almost like Martians who had mistakenly landed in the distrustful salon of Coverciano. Yet, a few years later, they would become the main pillars of the spectacular cathedral of Spain ’82, an unexpected masterpiece. Italian football, in essence, regenerates and is reborn only when there is no other solution.
For precisely this reason, today it would be a crime to discard players like Cissé, Lulli, Pisilli and Koleosho as simple experiments of the Nations League. These boys are not an emergency solution, but should become the programmatic manifesto of the next national team. We have already said that we do not have superstars, that on the horizon there are no Totti, Del Piero, Cannavaro or Buffon, that is, players capable of being compared with Yamal, Haaland or Mbappé. Precisely for this reason, we have no other path but that of collective play, of commitment, and even of courage. Better to take risks today than to pay the price of another colossal disappointment tomorrow. After all, half-measures we have already tried, and they have brought only defeats. Courage is the only miracle at our disposal.
Taken from La Gazzetta dello Sport