Defending Champions: Italy in Euro 2024, a dangerous underdog
The defending champions Italy are looking to defend their title in this year’s European Championships, which are taking place in Germany starting just a few weeks from now.
The competition is set to kick off on the 14th June with Germany hosting Scotland in Munich for the opening game of the expanded tournament. Italy will start their campaign the following day as they face Albania in their opening match.
Although Italy is a major European contender, and the current holders of the Euro trophy, their qualification out of their group is by no means guaranteed. Unfortunately for Italy, they were placed into Group B, which contains some heavy hitters in European football, with the footballing giants of Spain and Croatia in a three way battle for supremacy with Albania probably not going to be in contention for a qualification slot.
Although Italy are the current champions after their spectacular win against England at Wembley in 2020, they are going into this competition fresh off of losing out to a World Cup qualification spot, due to their shock loss to North Macedonia.
Furthermore, the loss of Roberto Mancini, who managed the Italy team has prompted a change of leadership at the top, which has caused the introduction of Luciano Spalletti to the Italy set up. With that said, this certainly isn’t a major step down, as Spalletti masterminded Napoli’s historic Serie A win last season.
However, there are still major concerns over the strength of the Italy squad, and their capabilities to facing the other footballing giants in their group. Although Italy has some series talents in their defence, with the likes of Roma’s Pellegrini and Inter Milan’s Barella all likely to appear in the Italy’s 2024 Euro’s squad, the main concern for Italy is their lack of abundance in top tier attacking threats. This has been made abundantly clear from their multiple recent draws from a strong defence, but feeble attack.
Luciano Spalletti is set to release a preliminary squad for Italy’s 2024 Euro’s run-on Wednesday, and his final 26-man squad by 7th June. However it seems reports hint that 80% of the squad has already been decided, and there are only a few spaces left in the squad for hopeful Italian fringe players to contend for.
In the run-up to the start of the Euro’s, Italy are set to have two friendlies to ready the squad for the upcoming championship. These games include a fixture against Turkey on 4th June, which will take place in Stadio Dall’Ara in Bolonga, and 5 days later on the 9th June, they will host Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Stadio Castellani in Empoli.
No-one expected Italy to win the Euros last time round, but the Italians can never be written off in any major finals as the history books show us.
