“Spain deserved to win,” Luciano Spalletti

Credit: Photo by Icon sport

In his post-match press conference last night, Luciano Spalletti said he should have given his players more rest before the Spain match, but insisted the Azzurri’s style of play won’t change: “It’s the only way to do things”.

The Azzurri suffered a 1-0 defeat to Spain on Thursday night, but the performance was far worse than the scoreline suggests. “We probably didn’t recover very well from the demands and importance of the tournament. Leaving aside any technical ability in terms of Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal, who have extraordinary pace, there was a big difference in the way we reacted to them in general. This meant we struggled when they counter-pressed, and we made mistakes with countless passes. Maybe I need to give them all a rest. We were constantly stretched and never able to reduce the space between our units, and they caused us problems beyond what the scoreboard suggests. We were too fast and couldn’t play compactly as a team. We didn’t play fluid soccer. Everyone would like to copy Spain in terms of the way they play. They’ve been playing the best soccer for the longest time. At the end of the day, if you play teams like this, it becomes difficult if you sit deep and have to rethink your concept of the team. Spain deserved to win, and we were never in the game, apart from the last 20 minutes of the match, we were never able to create situations that would allow us to compete with a brand of soccer of this level,” he declared.