The blue coach after Monday’s disappointment: “We didn’t win a European by chance, and with the full team in March we won’t be afraid of anyone”
ROME. “We will go to the World Cup”. Confidence, hard to scratch, was reaffirmed by Roberto Mancini even in the night, with a social post on the way back from Belfast. And then cold the next day: «We didn’t win a European by chance. In March I hope to recover everyone, with the whole team we do not fear anyone, even if it would be better to avoid Portugal », says the coach from his Jesi. The World Cup alarm went off for all of Italian football, with Malagò and Vezzali instilling confidence and Tavecchio chasing away ghosts.
“In 2017 – says the former federal president – I spoke of failure to qualify as an apocalypse: but this Italy is different from that of Ventura”. But the fear is there, starting with the team. «Now it’s complicated, also because we have the anxiety of 2017 …», confessed Ciro Immobile, who was not in Belfast yesterday but the 0-0 of four years ago with Sweden still remembers him very well. Beyond the desire to cover the real problems of Italy which has rediscovered itself as small with injections of optimism, the Azzurri coach has in fact already started the play off operation.
The appointment is for March 24, and the first alarm is that the current calendar foresees a championship day only four days before. The League of A did not consider the play off hypothesis, now Mancini will ask the FIGC to promote a change to the calendar. Mancini’s second move is the psychological one. The coach knows that it is not enough to chase away the ghosts from the head of the Azzurri, but even if it is not a sufficient condition, it is an indispensable step.
Mancini has five months, during which he will also have to understand who is ready and who is not, head and body, among his players, and possibly find valid alternatives: an operation that he has succeeded very well, in his three years, but in the long term. Time is running out now. “This is the group,” he said in Belfast, and among the few names of possible grafts is Lucca, still immature.
«It’s a negative period, but I continue to be very confident – insisted Mancini -. If there was a time when things didn’t have to go well, better now than in March or at the World Cup. The team is excellent and did not win a European championship by chance: we deserved it even by beating stronger teams »In any case, the first important date is November 26, when the draw for the playoffs will take place. With six seeds (in addition to Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Russia and Scotland already safe, and only three places to be defined in the evening for the unseeded), the possibilities are wide: they range from the risk of a group with Portugal, Holland and Norway to the light hypothesis Russia or Scotland, Macedonia, Ukraine. (HANDLE).