Donnarumma had a decidedly mixed first year at Paris Saint-Germain. Jorginho’s missed penalties cost them a place in the World Cup a symbolic figure when he came third in the Ballon d’Or voting, his summer of 2021 felt a Faustian pact. Federico Chiesa, perhaps the best forward in Euro 2020, had a season-ending injury.
They feel a team who had that rare combination of chemistry and timing, rather than a great side.
Roma’s raiding left-back facilitated the Mancini renaissance: he was arguably the player of Euro 2020 until he was injured and while they won the tournament without him, the formula looked less potent. They arrive at Molineux with just three defeats in 46 games, some youthful players selected with early thoughts of 2026, some ageing understudies merely filling in for the rested regulars and Leonardo Spinazzola. The current crop are altogether less iconoclastic than the playmaker. Indeed, until the 2026 tournament starts, it will remain the case that Andrea Pirlo played in Italy’s most recent World Cup match.
Giorgio Chiellini retired and his last experience of a World Cup was getting bitten by Luis Suarez in Brazil in 2014. The Nations League may serve as a World Cup warm-up for many another, but not Italy, so Leonardo Bonucci, Marco Verratti, Jorginho and Lorenzo Insigne were among those released. Then came the semi-final and final, the penalty shootout triumphs that owed much to Gianluigi Donnarumma but which seemed to show Italy’s winning mentality.įast forward a year and Italy returned to Wembley for the Finalissima Euro 2020 felt increasingly distant as Argentina won 3-0 and, after reuniting his continental champions, Mancini disbanded them. The first was the Euro 2020 last-16 tie against Austria, won with the aid of managerial intervention: Mancini seemed to possess a golden touch with relatively undistinguished players and Atalanta’s Matteo Pessina got what proved the decisive goal. Now they play a fifth game in England in 12 months. Perhaps it casts Italy’s Euro 2020 win in a different light, but while they emulated Greece’s 2004 winners, who then failed to qualify for the subsequent World Cup, a 37-game unbeaten run suggested it was less a freakish triumph than a sign of a more meaningful revival. In the days of 32-team World Cups, there is no parallel of such a major and sizeable footballing nation missing one tournament, let alone two in a row. The next game was North Macedonia in a play-off, not Brazil in a World Cup final. It might be seen as the hubristic humbling of Mancini, a man who overlooked the footballing cliché of taking each game as it comes. Then Italy faced North Macedonia, a shot count of 32-4 counting for little in a shock, and they had not even qualified for the World Cup. “Our aim is to win the World Cup,” he said. Management afforded him a redemptive arc.įour years later, Mancini remained as ambitious. An unused player in the 1990 World Cup, he fell out with Arrigo Sacchi before the 1994 tournament. "I have a dream, to win as national coach what I couldn't win as a player - a World Cup,” he said before he was even appointed Italy manager. Italy face England on Saturday night (Getty Images)
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