ROBERTO MANCINI & ITALY
World Manager of the Year, World Team of the Year
Was it all just a Midsummer Night’s Dream? The fact that Italy and Roberto Mancini have won both World Soccer’s Team and Manager of the Year awards serves to remind us that, recent negative results notwithstanding, 2021 was indeed a magical year for Italian football.
Italy’s triumphal march down the road to redemption, from the 2017 elimination from the Russia World Cup to Euro 2020 triumph, achieved by playing Mancini-inspired, quality football was undoubtedly one of the great highlights of the year.
When the Giampiero Venturacoached Italy crashed out against Sweden in November 2017, that disaster represented Italy’s worst football moment of the last 60 years. Not since the World Cup elimination in 1958 at the hands of Northern Ireland (who ironically have just played their part in prompting a potential repetition of that elimination, with that 0-0 Windsor Park draw) had a result prompted such nationwide dismay and soul-searching.
The long march back to the top table of international football began six months later with the appointment of 56-year-old Roberto Mancini, a sumptuously talented player who, unlike his predecessor, had a highly impressive coaching CV, having led both
Internazionale and Manchester City to league title successes.
Mancini affected a Copernican revolution, essentially replacing the traditional Italian defensive mentality with a surprisingly attacking mindset. Himself a gifted, quality player, Mancini put his trust in a penchant for good football and good footballers, those with “piedi buoni” (literally “good feet”).
Key to Mancini’s takeover was the creation of a very tight-knit management unit, comprising old friends and companions in arms: Gianluca Vialli (delegation head), Gabriele Oriali (team manager), Fausto Salsano and Attilio Lombardo (assistant coaches). No coincidence that three of these four played with him in the 1991 Serie A title-winning Sampdoria side, whilst Oriali worked alongside him during four highly-successful seasons as coach to Inter (2004-08).
By the time Italy arrived at the delayed Euro 2020 finals on the back of a 27-match unbeaten run, the revolution was steaming along. The quality of Italy’s football marked them down as serious contenders, notwithstanding the squad’s tournament inexperience and the lightweight nature of a team that revolved around little “good’uns” such as Marco Verratti, Jorghino, Nicolo Barella and Lorenzo Insigne.
A 3-0 demolition job on Turkey in their opening game in Rome confirmed that these Azzurri might be just as good as many of us had believed. From then on, Italy and Mancini got very little wrong. A second-half wobble against Austria in the second round, a penalty shootout win against Spain in the semi-finals and Luke Shaw’s secondminute goal in the final came close to sinking them but the overall enthusiasm, resilience and class of this team survived it all.
Not for nothing, Mancini observed after the Austria game, their first sudden-death tie of the tournament, that his side could now “just sail on without a bother”. His reasoning was that, having absorbed that fright and having proven their physical resilience, the Azzurri were now good to go all the way.
In the end, Italy v England was the dream final, a clash not only between two great footballing nations but also one between arguably the two most in-form teams of the tournament. In the opinion of many, too, Italy were full value for their Euro 2020 final win, given the consistently high quality of their football (their 2-1 quarter-final win over Belgium is a case in point).
Inevitably, Italy’s win was greeted not just with nationwide rejoicing but also nationwide relief in the wake of that bitter humiliation back in 2017.
In a perfect serendipity, that relief was twinned with another, more important national resurrection for Italy, namely the seeming emergence from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed 133,000 lives in Italy.
To some extent, this Italian team’s success plugged itself into a much needed “feel good” moment, one that represented a partial exorcism of the COVID-19 trauma. Player after player during the tournament dedicated their success “to all those who have suffered and lost loved ones because of COVID”.
Mancini has taken Italy down a new road and Italians have seen something they have never seen before from their national team, namely a side that played intense attacking, one-touch football – a sort of tiki-taka, Italian style.
Even if his Italy subsequently managed to throw away a World Cup qualifying group win that had seemed in the bag (if you miss a penalty in both matches against your closest rivals, Switzerland, you are clearly tinkering with disaster), all is not lost. Mancini still believes that his side has the quality and class to win its way through the new two-match play-off process. While defeat to North Macedonia (or Portugal or Turkey) in the play-offs would add a stunning chapter to the remarkable story of Mancini’s Italy, it would also be a great pity if an Italy team of this quality, style and bravura did not make it to Qatar next November.
A 3-0 demolition job on Turkey in their opening game confirmed that these Azzurri might be just as good as many of us had believed. From then on, Italy and Mancini got very little wrong