The European Championship brought back to Italy after 53 years, the tearful embrace of his friend Vialli on the Wembley lawn where they had lost a Champions Cup final together, the record wins, the game. But also the disappointment of the failure to qualify for the World Cup, the lost enamel after that double penalty missed against Switzerland by Jorginho, the difficulties in finding each other again. And a j’accuse in recent months that sounded like warning: “Don’t say that Italian football is reborn”.
It’s been five roller coaster years for Roberto Mancini at the helm of the national team. Called to revive the blue in 2018 after failing to qualify for the World Cup in Russia, he leaves after the disappointment of absence from Qatar 2022 and with a qualification for Euro 2024 still at stake. The coach from Jesi, a predestined career on the pitch – clear class and back-heeling, between magical Samp of Mantovani and Vialli and the last few years at Lazio of Cragnotti -, he landed on the national team bench in May 2018, after victories as coach of Inter, City and Zenit. From the St. Petersburg club, in that spring preceding the World Cup in Russia missed by Ventura’s national team, Mancini frees himself to fulfill his blue destiny: as a player he has failed in the appointments that count, as coach he must re-found the national team at its most Bass. And indeed, the blue ride under the leadership of Left-handed it’s an explosion of play, goals, victories, results and acclaim, after a barely sluggish start. To get to the European Championship won in 2021 on 11 July – the symbolic date: it is the same as the ’82 final – on penalties against England at Wembley, Mancini puts together a series of positive results which place him, in terms of statistics, ahead of sacred monsters of blue history.
Between November 2020 and July 2021, his Italy, set on 4-3-3 and ball possession, racked up 13 wins in a row, the best positive streak ever, overtaking Pozzo in numbers. Between 2018 and 2021, his 32 consecutive useful results make him the least defeated coach in the history of world football. But the numbers say little. The hug and tears to his friend Vialli on the Wembley lawn after Donnarumma’s decisive save from Saka’s penalty speak much more. There is a whole life, a ransom. A year and a half later, Mancini and all of world football mourned the former Sampdoria center forward, struck down by the incurable disease. And in the meantime, Mancini’s national team has lost its way. A double draw with Switzerland – with the curse of penalties saved by Sommer against Jorginho, one in the first leg, one in the return – condemns Italy to the playoffs: the draw puts the Azzurri in the group of Portugal, but in the final-playoff you don’t even get there.
In Palermo, a goal by Nestorovski sent North Macedonia ahead and the blues to a new hell. A matter of results, of course. But also for gaming. Italy admired by all of Europe for the victory of 2021 and even more for the will to impose the game is no longer there. A centre-forward is missing, he doesn’t score, Mancini makes use of natives like Retegui, the replacement in defense, after Chiellini’s farewell and with the decline of Bonucci, is difficult. Above all, the Italy of beauty has lost its way in midfield.
Mancini tries and tries again, does internships, complains that the clubs have not granted him space before the play-offs and invents ‘casting’ between young players from the lower leagues in search of new faces. In its management there are 104 players called up, many newcomers, the symbolic name – in the first phase – is Zaniolo, called up when he still doesn’t have even 1 ‘of Serie A in his legs. Then the ex Roma player, Kean, Zaccagni too will become the protagonists of gestures that the coach doesn’t like, with little attachment to the blue. How dislikes the air around a declining national team, whose problems are only hidden by the three finalists in the club cups. “Don’t say that Italian football is reborn”. Not even the restructuring of Club Italia launched in recent weeks by the FIGC president, Gravina, who entrusts him with the task of supervisor of all the national teams, from the young to his Italy, will not be enough to make him change his mind. But Mancini has chosen not to be coach anymore, and to close five years of victories and bitterness.
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