Spalletti and a phone call worth a goal towards Berlin

Leipzig - 'Hello Dario? It's Luciano...': nothing extraordinary, that's how we start thousands of phone calls. Only that this one arrives on the smartphone of whoever is writing at around 2am, in the belly of the Red Bull Arena, while still full of adrenaline for the emotions just experienced during a Italy-Croatia to say the least, intense match, we are closing reports and pieces for the morning (or rather, for that handful of hours that still separated us from dawn). On the other side of the metaphorical phone is that Luciano there, the Spalletti technical commissioner of the national team, landed with no small effort but also with no small merit to the round of 16 of Euro2024, which we will play on Saturday 29 June at 6pm in Berlin against Switzerland.

So much, perhaps too much, and perhaps even rightly so, in circulation during the evening. Adrenalin that led the reporter to share, with a question addressed precisely to the coach during the press conference, one of his personal convictions in recent days. That the changes in the formation and tactics of post-Spain and pre-Croatia Italy would have been more radical and profound than the common opinion and common sense had suggested; and that if this had been the case (as in fact it was), this mini-revolution could not have been made without prior dialogue and agreement with the dressing room, its leaders, in short, the real protagonists on the pitch, the players. Not a diminution of the role of coach, however, but rather the exaltation of that of technical commissioner, who listens, meditates and is perhaps even willing to modify his initial ideas to arrive at the final result (which has indeed arrived). A personal conviction that perhaps the reporter in question exposes in a direct and allusive way, using for synthesis the term 'pact' referring precisely to this Holy Football Alliance between the coach and the team-group.

This question, the one above, could in fact be interpreted in a more pointed and sibylline manner, that is, as if it presupposed instead a limitation of the prerogatives and faculties of the (technical) commissioner in question, bent in his intentions by the majority will of the players themselves. Unfortunately, it was precisely in this sense, and not in the other, that the coach took it in during the aforementioned press conference, thus opening a dense (public) dialogue with the reporter himself, based on the (incorrect) assumption that the hypothesis had matured thanks to who knows what tip-off that had come out of the (highly armoured, by the way) Azzurri retreat in Iserlhon and its surroundings. From there, the river analysis and clarifications that in recent hours have gone viral (alas, they say so) on social networks and the like.

As luck would have it, sitting next to the aforementioned reporter, during that same press conference, was the president of the Federcalcio Gabriele Gravina in person, who was the Great Mediator in this little and ultimately nice football melodrama, confronting the journalist and thus helping the coach to better interpret (albeit, for obvious reasons, a posteriori) his words and intentions.

This led to that ring and that brief and cordial telephone conversation in the middle of the night: a few minutes in which the coach apologised for the tone and a few words that had escaped well beyond the offside line; an apology accepted but not even necessary, from the point of view of the reporter, who had understood the meaning of the reply, permeated with passion for the Azzurri and for his work (as was demonstrated by the entire press conference, which lasted almost half an hour). And so in the very few hours of sleep that arrived shortly afterwards, the adrenalin gave way to the desire to continue this blue journey, in the conviction that sometimes even a ring and a phone call can push us all to give our best (in our respective and different roles) on the journey towards the crossroads with Switzerland in Berlin on 29 June. And who knows, maybe even a few days later, since on 14 July at the Olympiastadion we will be back and someone will also have the pleasure and the honour of lifting that Cup to the sky....