ROberto Mancini is not yet convinced to back down from his ambitions. He insisted at his first press conference as Italy manager, back in 2018, that he intended to put the Azzurri back “in the world”. On Monday, ahead of a Qatar 2022 qualifying play-off semi-final against Northern Macedonia, he reiterated that sentiment, saying “the goal is not to go to the World Cup, but to win it.”
In public, at least, Mancini never forced in his conviction that Italy would reach the November tournament. Not all of his countrymen are so convinced. The president of the Italian Football Federation, Gabriele Gravina, regrets a national culture of naysaying; the “gufi e gufetti” as he called them – literally, “owls and little owls”, but used in the Italian faith as a symbol for jinxen – “to put on branches of bad luck”.
Some concern is understandable in a country that is desperate to see his football team return to the World Cup after failing to qualify for the previous edition – the first time Italy has missed out on 60 years. But the context is very different this time.
Italy never found an identity under Mancini’s predecessor, Giampiero Ventura, constantly changing tactics and suffering a 3-0 humiliation from Spain as they emerged at Santiago Bernabéu for a key qualifier with an undefeated 4-2-4. Dissatisfaction with the manager was vividly illustrated as Daniele De Rossi refused to come off the bench in the play-off second leg against Sweden.
Mancini’s Italy arrives as European champions. True, their 37-game unbeaten run was completed in the Nations League semi-finals by Spain, but even then they withdrew to beat Belgium in third place play-off. Italy lost another match in this World Cup qualifier – falling in the play-offs due to too many draws: against Switzerland (twice), Bulgaria and Northern Ireland.
And yet, there are reasonable grounds for concern. Mancini stated that he had limited confidence in the core group that won the euro with limited preparation time. But against Northern Macedonia, he is expected to be without three-quarters of the defense that started the final against England. The retained starter, Emerson, was a mid-tournament replacement for Leonardo Spinazzola.
Previously, Italy lost Federico Chiesa to injury and Lorenzo Insigne’s form has been declining since last summer. Ciro Immobile is expected to keep his place in the number 9 role, and recently Silvio Piola as Lazio exceeded his top scorer in Serie A, but he did not find the net for Italy in six games.
A lack of goals is what put the Azzurri in this position. They conceded twice in eight group games – the least common in the UEFA qualifiers – but scored two goals over the four draws.
Mancini is not short of options. Together with Immobile and Andrea Belotti – Italian Alternative No. 9 at the Euros – he called up three more centers for their varied skills: the 6ft 4in Gianluca Scamacca, whose game is built around physics, his 5ft 8in Sassuolo teammate Giacomo Raspadori, a nice and explosive runners, and Cagliari’s João Pedro, a more technical player who easily takes lower positions.
Everyone has excelled at club level this season, and Mancini could consider the advantage of combining Scamacca or Raspadori with another Sassuolo player, Domenico Berardi, who is expected to start on the right side of the attack in Italy 4-3-3. But the first two games have nine international appearances and a single goal between them. João Pedro still won his first cap.
Italy will be favorites independently against Northern Macedonia, who themselves have lost key figures since Euro 2020. Goran Pandev, their all-time leader in appearances and goalscoring, withdrew from international football last summer, while Eljif Elmas, the Naples midfielder and one of their joint top scorers in qualifying, was suspended.
Most important may be the departure of Igor Angelovski, the manager who qualified Northern Macedonia for the euro – their first participation in a major tournament as an independent nation – and led them to an upset victory over Germany last March.
Nevertheless, they are not a team to be taken lightly. Italy faced northern Macedonia twice in their 2018 qualifying campaign, pulling in Turin and demanding a 92-minute winner from Immobile to win in Skopje.
The Italian government has dispensed for a full audience at the Palermo Stadio Renzo Barbera – at a time when other sporting events are limited to 75% of capacity due to the pandemic – as further proof of how much this opportunity weighs on a nation’s psyche.
“We should not have been here,” Mancini said on Monday, but he prefers to focus on the positives. “I have talented players who built a victory out of nothing that nobody believed in. That does not guarantee you will get to the World Cup, but it is a solid base.”
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