Of all the names to have been drawn out together for this summer’s European Championship, none were more heavily laden with history – both ancient and recent – than Spain and Italy, two of the heavyweights of international football. But have they moved beyond tiki-taka versus catenaccio, or with a place in the next round looming, might they be tempted to revert to stereotype?
By Ian King
“Spain beat Croatia 3-0 with 47% possession” feels like a group of contradictions all bunched together, but Luis de la Fuente has rebuilt his team and they blew their opponents away in the space of just eighteen first half minutes in their opening match. This may be a tournament too far for an ageing Croatia team, but with three goals and three different goalscorers, Spain had little to complain about.
“Italy concede the fastest goal in the history of the Euros against Albania” feels somewhat cognitively dissonant too, but that’s what happened as a result of Federico Di Marco throwing the ball straight to Nedim Bajrami twenty seconds into their opening game in Dortmund. They recovered to win 2-1, but this wasn’t the solid start that we might have expected from the holders of the competition.
The history books offer some degree of hope to both teams. On the one hand, Spain have only lost twice against Italy since 2011. But both of those defeats came when it mattered; in the Round of 16 at Euro 2016 and 4-2 on penalties in the semi-finals at Wembley three years ago. Neither of these are particularly good omens for Spain.
But if the Croatia game offered evidence of anything, it was that reports of Spain not having a ‘goalscorer’ may have been somewhat overstated. They pulled three out of the bag in that match. But Italy looked less certain against Albania. Just as Luis De La Fuente has done with Spain, Luciano Spalletti has reshaped Italy; they just didn’t seem to be quite so far down the road towards renewal as Spain looked in their opening match.
Both of these teams should still progress through to the next stage with a degree of comfort. But both would also delight in taking some degree of that comfort away from a very long standing rival. Both have changed their styles considerably of late, but muscle memory can be a powerful impulse. This time, tournament management might just edge out throwing caution to the wind.
(Cover image from IMAGO)
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