Italy EURO 2024 Live: Spalletti and Bastoni’s press conference ahead of Croatia

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Spalletti: “I saw him well even if he dragged himself into positions that were not required, but it’s understandable. I’ve picked these players. Cambiaso seems like a smart guy to me, but I need to know him better. He knows how to cover more roles, and he can fit into this football team that is like a family.”

Bastoni: “I am on good terms with Calafiori. He has enormous quality, he has no fear of playing the ball, and he’s similar to the player I was three years ago. As the coach said, playing certain games is an important step. We’ve played two games together so I hope we will complete this affinity with time.”

On Di Lorenzo: “It’s easy for me because he’s like my son in terms of how much time we’ve spent together. I always struggle to do without a player of Di Lorenzo’s ability. Of course, there are things I need to analyse, but I really believe in the ability of the man and the player. I don’t need to talk to him too much because there is a direct understanding. We talk, yes, but we understand everything and you see immediately the player’s attitude when he returns to the pitch.

“I know Jorginho less than Di Lorenzo. Now I have this camera always looking at me, perfect. He was probably under par v. Spain, but it all comes down to how the team plays as a whole. If we are able to keep the ball possession, great, but if we can’t, poor Jorginho, it is not his fault. It’s my fault. This is what football is about. Jorginho has an incredible ability that none of the other players have. He tells everyone how to behave and we don’t have many of these players on the pitch.  However, there are players who are pushing and have probably more energy than what Jorginho may naturally offer. He’s born with those qualities and with other issues, let’s call them this way. He can’t score many headers, but when he leads the team, he has this quality. We still strongly rely on Jorginho regardless of whether he plays or not for 45 minutes more.”

Spalletti: “Dimarco is fit again, so he’s available for selection, but we will have a fitness test tomorrow morning to confirm what we’ve seen. Everything points to the fact that he’ll be available tomorrow night.”

“Psychological recovery? It’s easy if we don’t get a result, we go home. It’s this easy. They know it well. We must be realistic and direct. We must make some quick steps forward to earn merit in life, it’s all quick. You must be quick to get on the train, or you’ll go walking.”

Bastoni: “I repeat, there’s no place or reason for fear in football. We have spoken about what happened v. Spain and we understood our mistakes. When you lose, you want the motivation to improve, and luckily, football always gives you a second chance, so we can’t wait to play tomorrow night.”

Bastoni on Italy’s attitude: “As I said before, aside from the technical errors, the attitude against Spain was wrong, and I think it was up to whether we could dominate proceedings because the more you have the ball, the more you have confidence. So the more we have the ball [against Croatia] the better.”

Spalletti: “Everything is possible. We brought all these players here, so anything is possible, but wingers that dribble past opponents and are good in one-on-one also need substance to play as they want to. You need to get the right shape, be tidy on the pitch and allow wingers to engage in one-on-one duels.”

Meeting Brozovic and Perisic again: “Everything they have can make a difference in a football game. They have running volume, quality, and experience; they have all the things needed to make a team pretty. They have a few years because they have a lot of experience. They are both strong footballers and I remember them well. I am on good terms with them. We still text each other once in a while and I love them as much as when I was their coach, so I’ll be happy to see them again. I am convinced they will cause trouble for us, but this is what football is about. We’ll see if we’ll be able to make our freshness count, especially in that direction when we face these big players. We must challenge them on intensity because they’ll need to recover sometimes. They are two great people and excellent footballers.

Lack of quality? “I like this group. When I imagined it, I thought we could do great things. We’ve made an analysis of our path with the team because we must look at what we have achieved. There is a need to take some more steps to do all we told each other, but we don’t have this time, so we must summarise and be ready because these games make your history big or small.”

Will we see Italy’s classic qualities? defence resilience etc….

Spalletti: “I think in today’s football, teams must be able to do more than one thing. Sometimes we’ll be forced to defend with 11 players with a low block. But when we win the ball, we must be quick to counter-attack without allowing them to defend properly. A few years ago, you could make it for the whole game, but in today’s football, I think it’s more difficult to defend with a low block for the whole game. All national teams have players who play in every top team. Actually, we are a team that needs to have players who go aboard and make an experience in top teams in Europe.”

Changes: “We’ll actually change our approach in some ways. We need guarantees in terms of continuity in terms of how we play. This is what the match requires. We will try to have substance and maybe play uglier but have greater substance, so make sure they don’t tap into their ability. We also want to play in their own half and not sit back, which is always risky. They. We want to keep the ball.”

Spalletti: “After a game like that, of course, there is an idea to try to change the team a little bit. I probably made a mistake in not mixing up things quicker in terms of the performance we produced [against Albania]. I thought it was so good that it would have been a gamble to tweak anything. Now that we’ve noticed there is a bit of fatigue, we will certainly change some things.”

Bastoni on playing with different systems: “Playing with a back three or back four is different, I have different duties than at Inter, but roles are relative in football. Even at Inter I find myself in positions that are different from the starting position. It’s about the footballing intelligence and smartness in moments that can be decisive. This is the point.”

Spalletti: “We have not been saving our performance at all. On the contrary, we expended a lot of energy by chasing the ball vs. Spain. Against Albania it was different. But we tried to do the same things in both games. In one game, we did it; in the other one, we didn’t. It’s simple. Therefore, we must see if we have learned something and are good at putting what we want to do into practice. We want to play our game even if Croatia have more experience and, to some extent, more technical. Aside from the game’s pace, there will be moments when we’ll need to slow down. We must understand the moments, be good at improving the pace and when we must slow down and keep a simple possession not to let the opponent do it.”

Spalletti: “Talk is cheap, you have to walk the walk rather than talk the talk because we were not able to show certain things we said against Spain. We need to walk the walk and leave talk to one side.”

Bastoni: “We need to take the sting out of the opposition’s enthusiasm with our approach. Our approach, more than any technical ability, is about being daring and showing self-confidence; that’s what we were lacking against Spain, but we have great respect for Croatia, and we’ll show it tomorrow.”

Bastoni: “I don’t like fear when referring to football. You have fear when you have an illness, or there are more serious things. We’ve looked at Croatia, they could have scored several goals vs. Spain. We have the utmost respect for them, they have experience and played so many games together. Many times it doesn’t even happen at at a club level. I think the Spain blow united us even more. It’s always easy to celebrate when you win, but it’s when you lose that you see how men are made. Tomorrow night we want to prove we have learned the lesson.”

Spalletti: “There are games that make your history big or tiny. When I met these players at their clubs, I saw their desire to be here, and this availability became a willingness to play these matches. I’ve seen an attitude that I like, but obviously, I didn’t like the performance the other day. We took a step back. But when you deal with opponents that are chosen by a country, the level is always high. Any country can put together 20 players with technique and experience and I expect to see what that game [against Spain] has taught us.”