The hug between Roberto Mancini and Gianluca Vialli, twins of the goal at Sampdoria and now brothers of Italy with the national team
In 1982 the Mundial of Spain, Sunday the European. The blue coach built the victory by focusing on the group as did the “Vecjo”
UDINE. Italy world champion in Madrid. 11 July 2021: Italy champion of Europe in London. In the stands President Pertini cheered in a decidedly less composed manner than Mattarella on Sunday evening at Wembley. There is a long and invisible thread that links the triumph of Enzo Bearzot’s blues to those of Roberto Mancini.
But the date isn’t the only point of contact. Yesterday, as then, there was a starless team of the first magnitude that then along the way found its winning men: Bruno Conti and Paolo Rossi then, Gigio Donnarumma and Federico Chiesa today. And there is a defensive solidity that has always characterized all Italian triumphs. And a splash of Friuli: thirty-nine years ago Bearzot on the bench, Zoff and Collovati on the pitch, this time Alex Meret and Bryan Cristante.
And then the coaches, apparently so different, but who actually have more than a few points of contact. Bearzot caused a sensation for having summoned Paolo Rossi, leaving Pruzzo, the championship’s top scorer, at home; in his small way even Mancini made a bit of discussion by calling Bernardeschi in blue after a bad year with Juve and excluding Politano, protagonist of a crescendo final with Napoli. Of course, Mancini enjoyed a good press unlike the “Vecjo” who had to endure criticism that often went beyond any reasonable limit. The two also crossed their careers. Bearzot after the World Cup won in Spain called up Mancini in the national team.
Coach Roberto Mancini gives tactical directives to Emerson Palmieri and Lorenzo Insigne during the final of the European Championship
He never called him back after the then 20-year-old “Mancio” left the retreat in New York where the national team was on tour in 1984 to spend the night in Manhattan. “He made me the biggest prick I’ve ever received from a coach,” the current coach recalled several times. That episode was useful to him then both in his career first as a footballer and then as a coach. In front of everything come the group and the rules to be respected. A player like Kean probably would have been more useful to this national team from a technical point of view than Raspadori, but the PSG striker did not integrate himself sufficiently in a group in which the word friendship is not thrown in at random. If today the Azzurri who triumphed in 1982 and those who raised the World Cup in Berlin have a chat in which they feel, it means that there is something more than a title to unite them.
On the occasion of Franco Causio’s 70th birthday (1st February 2019) at the party held in Friuli there were many of his blue teammates: to see them joking, laughing, making fun of each other, it seemed that time had stopped and they were there to discuss in the dressing room of the Bernabeu. We are convinced that in forty years it will be like this for Roberto Mancini’s boys. It is one of the secrets that makes sport unique and magical.