MADRID, 16 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Italian men’s soccer coach, Roberto Mancini, highlighted this Thursday that “Spain is a strong team even when it changes players”, alluding to the 2-1 score by Joselu Mato in the final stages of the League of Nations semifinal, minutes later of having replaced Álvaro Morata.
“Spain is a strong team even when it changes players,” Mancini told Sky Sport after the game in Enschede (Netherlands). “We created football a few years ago and perhaps we have to continue with that, we had prepared this match thinking that we could do something better”, lamented the ‘Azzurra’ coach.
“We do not play our football, we distort it,” he analyzed. “We had to play better, that’s for sure. We had set up the game a certain way, but maybe this is not our football,” he said of using a 3-5-2 scheme instead of 4-3-3. “In the first half it went well, in the second half we were too late and we couldn’t play anymore. Maybe I had to do something, I had to have changed something,” he reflected.
He also had words about his decision to leave Marco Verratti on the bench. “Barella and Frattesi can play together, this was the idea at the beginning of the game and then we could also change it. I repeat, I think there was a wrong evaluation on my part in the scheme,” he insisted.
On the other hand, before the Rai microphones, Mancini stressed that “Spain deserved to win despite the goal in the final stretch.” “We did little, especially in recovering the ball. Probably the fact that we played a tactically different match than usual penalized us,” he said in this regard.
“With Chiesa I asked for more depth, that’s why I introduced him instead of Immobile. But he didn’t disappoint me, the boys left everything they had on the field,” concluded the ‘Azzurra’ coach, who next Sunday (3:00 p.m.) ) will play against the Netherlands team for finishing this League of Nations in third place.