E Una festa e non siamo stati invitati. It’s a party and we’re not invited.
Taking aside the fact that the most controversial World Cup in history was more of an awkward gathering than jolly knees-up, those words, written in Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport late last year, rather summed up the country’s emotion at once again missing out on a tournament they have won almost as often as anyone in history.
By the time the 2026 World Cup comes around, it will have been a dozen years since the Azzurri’s last appearance. There will be students at Rome’s Sapienza University by then for whom seeing their country at a World Cup is but the faintest of childhood memories.
Viewed through the prism of the Coppa del Mundo, it has been a period as dark as any in Italian footballing history, and yet Roberto Mancini’s men, of course, start their European Championship qualifying campaign against England on Thursday as defending champions.
Set against the context of twin World Cup failures, Italy’s success at Euro 2020 looks an almighty fluke, an almost literal bolt from the blue. Anyone who saw it, however, knows it was anything but.
Italy were magnificent across the course of that summer month, a wonderfully synchronised side crafted by Mancini that looked the tournament’s best right from the opening night. Spain and England each grew into the competition, saving their best performances for the knockout rounds, but neither could quite bridge the gap.
Mancini had not simply resurrected a team in ruins after the failure to qualify for Russia, but built a new one in a new image and embarked upon a world record 37-game unbeaten run. On that score, there seemed no man better qualified for a similar job after last year’s humiliating play-off defeat by North Macedonia.
Even so, there was surprise when the former Manchester City boss decided to stay on the horse. There was a sense that the 58-year-old had taken the North Macedonia debacle personally, and he has since had to deal with great personal tragedy, too, following the death of assistant coach and long-time friend Gianluca Vialli, who will be honoured at Thursday’s game, Italy’s first since his passing. Like Gareth Southgate, Mancini must surely have thought long and hard about going around again.
The two managers have shared parallels throughout their international reigns, and ahead of a fourth meeting in less than two years this evening, the pair held similar gripes over the number of native players featuring in their countries’ respective domestic leagues.
In Southgate’s case, the concern seems to be over the future of English football and a shallowing talent pool — after all, the cream of his current crop are, almost without exception, leading men at the Premier League’s biggest clubs, not always the case during his tenure.
For Mancini, though, the situation is hindering his second rebuild here and now. Serie A is thriving, with three clubs into the quarter-finals of the Champions League for the first time since 2006. But of the 33 players who started for AC Milan, Inter Milan and Luciano Spalletti’s thrilling but extremely cosmopolitan Napoli side in the second legs of their last-16 ties this month, only nine were qualified to play for Italy.
“Italian football hasn’t been reborn,” Mancini moaned. “If there were 33 Italians on the pitch, maybe, even half of them being Italian would be enough.
“I believe that phenomenal players emerge in South America, Argentina and Brazil, where kids play in the streets. This doesn’t happen in Italy. This is a problem. It takes time [to develop players]. At this moment there aren’t new talents in Italy.”
Which is why Mancini has turned to Argentinian-born forward Mateo Retegui. With Federico Chiesa and Giacomo Raspadori both injured, attacking options are thin on the ground, and the 23-year-old, who has spent his entire career so far in his native country, could, both fittingly and controversially, make his debut at the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium on Thursday, having been called up on account of an Italian grandparent.
Mancini has come to the conclusion, it seems, that to avoid missing out on the big dance this time, Italy may have to get funky in their thinking.
