What is hidden behind the coach’s communication on the eve of the most important week for our football. He said that Italy is not a team of “runaways” and he is right, but the Azzurri need to believe it…
The catchphrase “We are not runaways” which opened the most important week for Italian football, Gattuso probably said so that it would be received more within the walls of Coverciano than outside. There is a huge self-confidence issue in the group that will face Northern Ireland in Bergamo and, hopefully, a Wales-Bosnia matchup in the final of the finals. It’s all the fault of the failures against Sweden (2017) and North Macedonia (2021) which kept Italy out of the World Cup in the last two editions despite a history full of glory.
Self-esteem which does not mean underestimating the opponent and over-estimating one’s own qualities, a capital mistake already made in the run-up to the trip to Norway last June which put the qualifying group uphill, effectively forced us into the play-offs and sent Spalletti home. It is impossible for the Azzurri to arrive at the night in Bergamo convinced that they can get a single bite of Northern Ireland and the same will happen when they (hopefully) get on the plane to Wales or Bosnia.
The problem is exactly the opposite. Italy goes to the world playoff carrying on its shoulders the weight of the failures of the past and the entire debate on the quality of our football. Even the early mass elimination of Serie A teams from the Champions League has strengthened the idea that everything is wrong and everything should be thrown away: there is some truth, a lot of it is linked to the narrative of those who do not particularly like the current Football Federation, its men and the resulting balance.
But, as Gattuso said, we are not runaways and the national team that must drag us to the World Cup has values that must be recognized first of all by those who are part of it. There are European champions (Donnarumma fresh from winning the Champions League with PSG, for example), players who reached the final stage a few months ago (the Inter fans), others who were present at Wembley in 2021 and a group that as a whole has international experience.
The coach has been working on the head of this team for months. The traumatic second half at San Siro against Norway represented a shock because it erased in one fell swoop the progress in self-esteem and awareness somehow made in the previous matches. Then the window closed and it was time for the summons. In between, as has been said by many, lots of phone calls and dinners so as not to interrupt the thread of relationships with his boys so as to present themselves on the day of truth with a shared path.
Gattuso explained that even the choice of the venue for the semi-final – Bergamo and not San Siro or the Olimpico in Rome – was dictated by this need: to protect the national team from any potentially negative emotional shock. A whistle, half a whisper, something difficult to manage for those who already carry on their shoulders the responsibility of avoiding a failure which, linked to previous ones, would have disruptive effects on the entire system.
Last summer Gattuso was chosen also and above all for this. There was no time to bring a coach to Coverciano with ideas to be developed little by little but someone was needed who was able to get straight to the heart and mind of the national team, playing the most pragmatic football possible. Now is the time to reap the benefits of that investment on which Buffon, a man of football and not of sports politics, has put his face. On the other side of the most important week for Italian football there could be the paradise of a World Cup to prepare knowing that the group isn’t even terrible, or the hell of an unprecedented landslide. There are also those who support this second option, but Gattuso knows it and moves on.
