Mika Godts and Dodi Lukebakio scored, and Italy lost 2-0 at home in Roberto Mancini’s second match since his return. The coach picked out one precise stretch of the game: “We have to start again from the good things that we saw during the first 25 minutes of the second half. We were aggressive, recovered the second balls and we didn’t concede anything. We shouldn’t force things when there is no space,” he said, according to Football Italia.
The rest of the evening cut up less neatly. About 40,000 spectators, barely half the Olimpico’s capacity, and boos at the final whistle. Mancini answered in his press conference: “Boos can happen when you lose. However, it wasn’t all negative as the first 25 minutes of the second half show.”
Twenty-five minutes, measured to the millimetre. One man, at least, was taking notes.
Now, tactically, that’s the right approach. I do the same on Monday: I keep the best bit too. My best bit runs from the 52nd to the 61st minute, the moment the club delegate nipped off to refill the coffee and nobody shouted at us. We recover the second balls as well. Especially the ones that end up in the neighbour’s field: that takes real aggression, he’s got a dog. Twenty-five minutes without conceding anything, I’d sign for that straight away. Even twenty.
The coach also brought up the World Cup play-off final defeat to Bosnia-Herzegovina, which he says is still on his players’ minds: “It’s something that weighs fairly heavily, but we have to let it go. We can’t think about what’s happened in the past, we have to think positively and not about what happened previously because we can’t change that.”
Forty thousand people, and they say the stadium’s half empty. With forty of us, I’d print tickets and the clubhouse bar would fund two new sets of bibs. And the past, fair enough, you leave it in the dressing room. For us, the past is pitch 2 on the slope: we talk about it every week, but we can’t change it. A flat pitch away, mind you.
Mancini also promised an ascent: “We have to climb Everest and it will be beautiful when we get to the top.” First camp: Turkey, Monday night, in the Nations League.
It’s true, we checked: Football Italia.
