Thanks to its victory on penalties against England no less than at Wembley, Italy became queen of Europe for the second time in its history, after 1968. The ‘azzurra’ team, led by Roberto Mancini, eliminated Spain on penalties in Eurocup semi-finals, after beating Belgium in the quarterfinals and Austria in the round of 16.
In the grand final, Luke Shaw scored in minute 2, but Leonardo Bonucci leveled in 67 ‘. And in the end, the title was decided in the penalty shoot-out, in which the hero was Gianluigi Donnarumma, elected MVP of the Eurocup. Today the PSG goalkeeper stopped two maximum penalties, those of Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka. Italy’s top scorers in the tournament, Manuel Locatelli and Matteo Pessina, with 2 each.
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It was Mancini who once again made the ‘azzurra’ a European champion team. He reached the ‘nazionale’ in 2018 when the team was under the shock of not having qualified for the 2018 World Cup in Russia and managed to rebuild it. The problem for Italy, however, is now that they will have to play the play-off to get a place in Qatar 2022 and in that play-off they will be in the same group as Portugal. The other side of 2021 of the ‘nazionale’.
But this slip in the qualifying phase for Qatar 2022 does not show the glory of Italy. It was just Sunday, July 11, which marked the 39th anniversary of the World Cup won by Italy by Paolo Rossi or Dino Zoff in Spain 1982, when Italy won the European Championship 39 years later.
It has been 15, since the 2006 World Cup, that Italian fans could not celebrate a great title of their beloved ‘nazionale’. This Italy the work of Roberto Mancini made it possible.