Roberto Mancini looked ahead to Italy’s upcoming friendly against Albania and reflected on their failure to qualify for the World Cup in Qatar.

The Azzurri will be forced to watch the upcoming tournament in Qatar from home over the next six weeks, a painful reality for Italy fans after their devastating play-off loss to North Macedonia earlier this year. Mancini decided not to resign after the disaster and instead will oversee the rebirth of the Azzurri ahead of Euro 2024.

Speaking in a press conference, Mancini first discussed the difficulties of the next few months for the Italian national team.

“It will be a difficult month… it has just started. In the bitterness we may feel at the moment, games have to be played, there are things to see and evaluate. 

“There are things that will be useful for us from March onwards, even if it is of no value. We can try new guys and something tactical.”

He commented on the returns of Federico Chiesa and Nicolo Zaniolo, as well as the absence of Moise Kean.

“We’re happy that Federico is back. He has to find his condition again but he’s fine. Zaniolo is an important resource for us, he can give us a lot and he will improve in all aspects. 

“He’s a young guy and when you’re young you always improve. Kean has been with us many times, if he continues to score and do well we’ll call him up.”

The Italy coach touched on why he cares about tomorrow’s friendly against Albania.

“Because it’s the basis of sport. We came to play a good game and we know they’re not that weak. We hope to play a good game and then we’ll see how it goes.”

He reflected on the emotional difficulties of not qualifying for the World Cup in Qatar.

“I’ve been experiencing it quite badly since March. We deserved to go, but unfortunately we missed our chances. 

“Football is also this, after a great satisfaction came a great disappointment and now we cannot do anything. A World Cup without Italy is different, we have to work in the right way to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Finally, Mancini discussed his tactical plan for the Azzurri ahead of their friendly against Albania.

“Zaniolo for the qualities he has and for the player I know the mezzala can be a good position, but he often plays also as an outside forward and can also do that role there. 

“As far as the tactics are concerned I don’t know which is the best, in the last two we changed a bit to see if it could give us an advantage. Our players can play more than one formation.”

20 thought on “Mancini: ‘Italy deserved to be at the World Cup’”
  1. We were unlucky in that we bossed all of our qualifying games, including the play-offs, creating numerous chances, but no, we don’t deserve to be Qatar because couldn’t put the ball in the back of the net, only drawing with Bulgaria (h), Switzerland twice, Northern Ireland (a) and losing to North Macedonia.

  2. @Bruno. “only drawing with Bulgaria (h), Switzerland twice, Northern Ireland (a) and losing to North Macedonia… creating numerous chances” No striker no party. Your words say it all.

  3. They would be there if he hadn’t stuck with the same players toooo long, Hello By the way I deserve to be rich

  4. Did we deserve to finish about Schweiz? Yes. But if you can’t put two penalties away and take your chances, you don’t deserve to win. the game away should’ve been put to bed in first half. But we couldn’t score.

  5. No striker no party. This is the only problem. In 2006 we had 4 or 5 top level strikers. Now we have none.

  6. Agree with all above. The teams that deserve to be there are going there. Can create a million chances but if you don’t score, that’s the result. The future is promising but we need to turn this anger into energy on the pitch.

  7. People commenting about not deserving to be there should follow a different sport. European champions that get knocked out by a “fluke” goal, from a team that played a 1-9-1 formation in a city that none of the Italian players played in. The best team doesn’t always win a single game, do your research.

    Fact, Italy were always going to punish Portugal, but struggle against North Macedonia… that’s what they do

  8. Sorry but time to soldier on by now. This talk about how Italy ‘deserved’ to be at World Cup is so unbecoming for such a proud country.

  9. Mancini is delusional if he thinks Italy deserved to go through and if he thinks that we did the way we played in the qualifiers maybe he’s not the man
    to build a new Italy he needs to come out in the open and tell the truth that if our players took more of our chances we would have been there
    Remember his comment’s during qualifying saying don’t worry well get there maybe he’s was the problem

  10. We do not deserve to be there as we were simply not good enough. No other giant of international football would win a tournament and then turn to absolute garbage overnight and fail to qualify for the next tournament. Italy are no longer a World Cup team as 4 disastrous World Cup campaigns in a row prove.

  11. Same old goal scoring problems, didn’t deserve to be there. If Mancini had put in Scamacca and Raspadori for the last few qualifiers, perhaps they would have got there. Too little change , too late.

  12. This guy is not the man to build a new Italy he’s been damaged mentally he’s had his day winning the euros thank you very much a new younger Italy need a new younger coach

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