Spalletti admits he will ‘have to change things’ after Italy eliminated from EURO 2024
The first two questions were quite straightforward. Will he still be the Italy coach and what’s next for the team?
“It’s a natural question; don’t feel guilty for asking me. This is the point,” Spalletti replied.
“It changes nothing to me in the sense that I have the responsibility for what happened. I’ve picked the players. I am not happy with the performance we produced today and the performance against Spain.
“I am partially happy with the other two matches we played. This time I rested them up and changed the team. In the previous game, I blamed it on myself, regardless of team selection, for not making too many changes.”
During his post-match interview with Sky, Spalletti had blamed the “tempo and sharpness” of the team.
“Recently, we tried to train the players in a certain way to have intensity and quick recovery runs because there are methods that can allow for improvement,” he added in his post-match presser.
“In terms of that, I wasn’t overly happy with our responses on the training ground, but these are the players I’ve picked. This is part of the process and I have to say this. All other coaches had 20 matches in charge before the Euros, and somebody else had 30. I had ten and we were already under pressure. It’s only right that we have to win. I probably need to get to know my team a bit better to be able to set things up better. We had a number of players who sustained injuries. In terms of intensity, we were under par, and Switzerland won.
“The future of the Italian team comes down to making different choices; we need players who are more physical,” said Spalletti.
“When you have quality but in terms of tempo, you lose intensity and you can’t sustain it for 90 minutes, it’s natural that you need to bring more physicality and mix things up. We struggled in one-v-one and that made the difference in terms of winning the ball back.
Federation President Gabriele Gravina and coach Luciano Spalletti will hold a press conference tomorrow following their embarrassing EURO 2024 elimination.
They were comprehensively out-played in a 2-0 defeat to Switzerland, going out of the European Championship before the quarter-finals for the first time since EURO 2004, when they crashed at the group stage.
Questions are being asked of how the Nazionale will go forward in qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup, especially after missing each of the last two editions of the biggest football tournament.
Pressure on Spalletti and Gravina
Spalletti and Gravina will hold a joint press conference at the Iserlohn training camp on Sunday at 12.00 local time (11.00 UK time).
This will be while the players and staff pack their bags to leave the centre far earlier than they expected.
Although neither is expected to tend their resignation, nor necessarily be fired, the pressure is already growing on them both.
Spalletti was only brought in to replace Roberto Mancini in September 2023, just days before two crucial EURO 2024 qualifiers against North Macedonia and Ukraine.
The competition in Germany was the first time he had more than a few days to work with the squad at his disposal, but his constant chopping and changing of tactics stalled any sort of progress.
