NEven before the overture to the pan-European football festival began on Friday evening, Roberto Mancini had sketched his dream. “The title,” emphasized the coach of the Squadra Azzurra he had revived, “could be a rebirth for football and the whole country.”
Achieving big goals is a natural drive for the successor to Gian Piero Ventura, who failed for the first time in Italian history in qualifying for a major tournament, the 2018 World Cup in Russia. At this year’s European Championships, Mancini wants to bring Italy back to where the Tifosi have long since located the four-time world champion and European champion from 1968: upwards, if possible in first place.
On the path that Mancini considered possible, the first victory in the duel with Turkey was to be achieved in the Roman Stadio Olimpico, where Germany had become world champions in 1990 with Andreas Brehme’s penalty goal against Argentina. Mancini wanted to add another happy chapter to the series of 27 matches without defeat. What succeeded in the safe 3-0 victory by an own goal by the Turkish Demiral (53rd minute), the goal of the tried and tested striker Immobile (66th) and the goal of the Neapolitan Insigne (79th) after a test of patience in the first half.
While Mancini, the former national player and star striker of Sampdoria Genoa, relied on the almost revolutionary courage to attack by Italian standards, the Italians faced an adversary who, unlike in the past, has recently distinguished itself through concentrated defenses. A paradigm shift also in Turkey, which used to impress with beefy attackers, but appeared defensive but quite vulnerable. In eight of the ten European Championship qualifying encounters for a tournament that has been postponed from 2020 to this year due to the corona epidemic, the team coached by Senol Günes remained without a goal.
They also wanted to demonstrate this unattractive art in the first half of this comparatively temperamental European Championship overture. They managed that, but the spirited Turkish fans among the 16,000 spectators waited in vain for their team’s shot on goal after one of the few counter attempts – an atmospheric benefit after all those months in deserted arenas – before the break.
But even the Tifosi, unmistakable with every halfway promising attack of their team as loud support, initially longed in vain for the one big moment. As is so often the case in opening games, tough food was served. Until the break, with statistically recorded 14 shots on goal of inferior quality, the header of the 36-year-old captain and central defender Chiellini alone seemed dangerous, which goalkeeper Cakir steered over the crossbar (22nd minute) .
The Turks, looking for a lucky punch, had to deal with a devastating moment shortly after the break, which they could no longer manage. With the Italians, who are now picking up the pace, it was not the first time that winger Domenico Berardi prevailed on the right side and flanked sharply in front of the goal. There the ball hit the Turkish central defender Demiral, under contract with Juventus Turin, against the upper arm and from there into his own goal net. With this, the pace and desire for combination grew in the Italian attack game, while the Turks, who had previously been clarified in defensive work, were increasingly under pressure and floundering.
In order to take at least one point from Rome for the following group A duels against Wales and Switzerland, a clever attack finally had to follow. But that didn’t come. The Italians were now enjoying their own game and more and more often found the space to make a decision. That matured in the middle of the second half, when Cakir had blocked a shot from the strong right-back Spinazzola from AS Roma, against the margin of Ciro Immobile, the former center forward of Borussia Dortmund and now the goalscorer on duty at Lazio Rome, was the Turkish goalkeeper powerless. The game was decided, so that Insignes Schlenzer to 3-0 after Cakir’s bad pass and Immobile pass illustrated the joy of the Italians once again.
The rest was after the ninth straight-line victory of the Squadra Azzurra, an Italian show, combined with the assumption that borders on certainty that Italy should have returned to the circle of the major European football nations. Against Switzerland next Wednesday, the next demonstration of the new Italian desire to attack could follow in the Stadio Olimpico.
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