THE ACADEMY STADIUM – In a tournament which has become besotted with predictability, Italy are beginning to buck the trend. “A European Championship of suffering for us” is how their head coach Milena Bertolini described it after Thursday’s draw with Iceland.
This is a group that France were always destined to win, but Italy were the dark horses who many believed could produce a performance akin to that of their 2019 World Cup run.
There they reached the quarter-finals before losing to eventual runners-up Netherlands on that stage. In their run they had set aside Australia, only lost by one to Brazil and beaten China in the knockouts – they’d proved themselves to be a relatively strong up-and-coming side.
In their performances at Euro 2022, meanwhile, have been anything but promising. They lost 5-1 to the French in their opening fixture owing to a defensive collapse and the particularly potent front-line of their opposition.
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“Expectation is a very difficult killer inside of us,” Bertolini added. “We are not used to expectation so probably we are suffering from that.”
Their defending was sloppy, a vulnerability which remained from that fixture five days ago. In midfield, too, they left much to be desired and barely had an impression on the game.
There was a certain impetus lacking which sides who can go far in tournament football would usually exhibit. The fans who so dearly belted out their national anthem ahead of the match would have left east Manchester with little to be enthused about.
The only saving grace was their attacking force, but even that took rather a long while to impose itself on the game. In the first half Valentina Giacinti toiled and forged a path for her side down the right flank, but the end product wasn’t there.
Spurred on by the introduction of Barbara Bonansea and Cristiana Girelli in the second half they produced a goal and earned themselves a point, Valentina Bergamaschi latching onto Bonansea’s pull-back to fire her side to level pegging.
It would be disrespectful to Iceland, though, to wholly attribute this result to Le Azzurre’s failures. While it was undoubtedly a factor, Iceland will feel that they have made a good impression of themselves.
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The latter is 21, the former only 20. If anything, this has been a competition which has shown that Iceland have the talent to earn the dark horses title in the future.
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