The National team returns to Wembley in the race of farewells and memories

Italy challenges Messi’s “selección” on the pitch where 11 months ago they won the European Regrets for the vanished World Cup: it is the end of a cycle. Last match for Chiellini

SENT TO LONDON

In that door Bonucci put us back on track and silenced the English roar, in the other Gigio worked miracles. Below, “you remember it,” Mancini and Vialli hugged each other so tightly that they seemed to be the same person. Surely they were the same tears. And then, in the middle, Chiellini raised the cup to the sky. And Spinazzola jumped on crutches.

It was July 11, 2021. How we were. Champions of Europe and that’s why we’re here, we’re back in London. Inside Wembley, since last year Casa Italia. We will play the Grand Final tonight: facing Argentina, winner of the Copa America. Who hasn’t lost in 31 games, which has Messi, Dybala, Martinez, Di Maria. To stay with the most famous. Coached by Lionel Scaloni, forgettable full-back of Lazio and Atalanta known as “El Toro”. Argentina which, above all, will go to the World Cup in Qatar while we will be watching. You can’t pretend nothing has happened, it could have been a party and maybe it will be even as long as you don’t want to get out of the bubble. Until November we can hide the bitterness and pretend to run on parallel roads, we and the other national teams, but the closer Qatar gets, the more we will take different directions.

Tonight, words also from the coach “a cycle is closing”. The Last dance for Giorgio Chiellini after 117 matches in blue, a story that began 22 years ago that will be honored before the kick-off with a special award ceremony. Skip the last performance instead, by Lorenzo Insigne (left battered from the finishing, in attack ready Raspadori together with Belotti and Bernardeschi) directed to Canada and who knows when and if we will see him again. There are no European champions, Chiesa, Immobile, Berardi and Verratti injured in various capacities. Not the first game of the new course, but the waste of an epic that will remain with us forever and which, however, we have not been able to polish as we should and could have.

“Playing at Wembley is always exciting. For us, then, it is even more so given what we have achieved. But the memories do not mitigate the Magone for not being able to go to the World Cup ». Mancini is sincere and you can see that he gnaws at this part. He had a vision, he alone, predicting a successful future for a national team on which no one would have bet a euro. He hasn’t taken a step back or sideways. He touches the second reconstruction: «We will have to be quick to restart, this is the new challenge. And we will have to be good at giving courage to these young people. So much courage, because they are even more inexperienced than those who preceded them. But from tomorrow onwards they will have to prove their worth, let’s turn the page ».

Tonali, Scamacca, Frattesi, Raspadori, Ricci: it will be up to them and to those like them. Because who knows what the coach has in mind. He speaks of a “just tribute” to the champions and ultimately also to himself, even if it will take much more to remove the stain from the shameful Macedonia, assuming that he never succeeds. So tonight let’s sit down and enjoy the past, the future begins tomorrow and from Saturday we enter the laboratory with the Nations League. We don’t need a scientist, but one with good ideas in mind. Mancini is convinced that his football is the best way to rebuild. We give him credit, from the Wembley bubble it is not possible to do otherwise. –

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