Find The Best Composition, Italy Rises After Appearing Bad At Euro 2024

Italy has improved in the UEFA Nations League after poor performance at Euro 2024 (Instagram/@azzurri).

JAKARTA - Italy's 1-3 defeat to France in the last match of the 2024/2025 UEFA Nations League last weekend did not deserve to be a single reference assessing the performance of the Azzurri.

Since being handled by Luciano Spaletti as of September 1, 2023, Italy has slowly shown its curvature.

The failure of the Azzurri to appear in the 2022 World Cup while being carpentry by Roberto Mancini is a valuable lesson.

Spaletti brought Italy through the Euro 2024 Qualification in its first year. In January 2024, he was in second place on the list of the 2023 FIFA Men's Coach Best awards, under Pep Guardiola.

This predicate was tried to prove spaletti when Italy appeared at Euro 2024 last summer. The results are not good enough.

The Azzurri qualified for the knockout stages armed with runners-up in Group B with just four points behind Spain (nine points). They only packed one win, one draw, and one defeat.

Italy immediately fell as soon as it entered the last 16. They were crushed by Switzerland with a convincing score of 0-2.

The negative result made Spaletti clean. He tries to find a suitable composition of players with his system, often installs three defenders and relies on the role of winger midfielder.

Several famous names were kicked out, three months before appearing in the UEFA Nations League. Spaletti relied on many young players.

He only leaves Giovanni Di Lorenzo as a senior 31-year-old player. The rest, his troops are under the age of 29 years old. The average age of the player, without Di Lorenzo, is 24.1 years.

As a result, Italy began to bring out its best performance. Travel in the first five matches was flashy, four wins and one draw, before finally losing to France in the group's final match.

However, at least Italy has confirmed its legs to the quarter-finals of the UEFA Nations League.

The players began to feel that the team's performance was better than at Euro 2024.

"After the Euros, we recovered well, played some good games. We are a young squad and need to continue this path," said Andrea Cambiaso, a 24-year-old midfielder.

Moise Kean agrees with Cambiaso. He mentioned that Spalletti provides a system that allows players to do their best.

"I think we've shown in this UEFA Nations League that we're a very good team."

"The coach made us play in a way that could bring out our best abilities. There are many young players who want to prove their abilities," Kean said at RAI Sport.

Thus, the weakness that arose in the group's last match against France was a small problem that had just been realized.

Three conceded Les Bleus through a dead ball scheme opened Spaletti's eyes that the other three goals with a similar pattern before turned out to be a serious problem.

In total, there were the last six conceded from set pieces. Luckily, Italy was aware after the group stage was over.

They still have a long time to improve before appearing in the quarter-finals of the UEFA Nations League.

However, overall, France actually has difficulty creating opportunities through open play.

On the other hand, Italy made a lot of chances, but goalkeeper Mike Maignan's luck thwarted the kans conversion into goals.

"In addition to free kicks, France barely created anything in the second half, while we created many chances."

"During injury time, Maignan made a great save on Moise Kean's chances. I think we played well overall," Cambiaso said.

"Maignan played very well, I tried to surprise him. We played a good game and were unlucky with the results, but we were able to learn from this."

"There's not much room to attack, France has some very good defensive players. We have to take lessons from that," Kean replied.

In essence, Italy's performance throughout the UEFA Nations League group phase has improved much more than at Euro 2024.

Spaletti seems to have found the right composition with his young squad. The defeat to France was not so regrettable.

You see, the most important thing for the Azzurri is that they can still secure a place in the quarter-finals of the UEFA Nations League.

"It was certainly a difficult match, because France was a great team. However, we fought until the end."

"We conceded three goals from a set-piece situation, which is a bad sign. However, France shows that they respect us."

"It was just another step in the UEFA Nations League journey that we started well."

"Of course, disappointing losing like that. However, we also have chances and should have been able to play better."

"The defeat is always painful, but you also need to analyze how it happened."

"Don't forget the much worse situation we have rebuilt in the summer (Euro 2024)."

"I saw it in the UEFA Nations League, we were positive. The goal was to qualify (to the knockout phase) and we managed to do it."

"The first finish will be a bonus, but we are doing what we need to do," said Nicolo Barella.

Italy will next occupy Pot 2 in the draw for the knockout phase which will be held on Friday, November 22, 2024.

The Azzurri are likely to meet other group winners, such as Germany, Spain, or Portugal.

If they become group winners, the quarter-finals would not be so steep because of the possibility of meeting the Netherlands, Croatia, Scotland, Poland, Denmark, or Serbia.