Italy (National Football)

Having won their first three Euro 2016 qualifying matches, Sunday evening saw Italy’s biggest test to date in a meeting of Group H’s top two sides. Milan’s San Siro was the venue as Nico Kovac’s team—also possessing a perfect record thus far—travelled to face Antonio Conte’s much improved Azzurri.

The former Juventus boss has overseen an impressive turnaround following his appointment, with the team already vastly different from Cesare Prandelli's that was so disappointing at last summer’s World Cup. At the heart of that transformation are a number of his former players—dependable stars the coach knows he can rely upon.

Andrea Pirlo has ended his international retirement to help Conte, rejoining Gigi Buffon, Giorgio Chiellini and Claudio Marchisio to give Italy a black-and-white spine. But here against Croatia Italy had been robbed of the creativity Pirlo so ably provides, with the bearded genius ruled out last week with an injury.

Their problems were compounded by the loss of Marco Verratti, the Paris Saint-Germain youngster who was sent back to France after failing to overcome a thigh complaint, per ANSA. But someone else who—like Conte—left Turin and is equally responsible for the resurgence of the national team would attempt to step into that void.

Antonio Candreva was selected as part of the central trio, seeking to bring his impressive Lazio form to the Azzurri midfield. He would make an immediate impact, netting a well-taken goal after just 11 minutes and handing his team an early lead against the run of play.

It was simply a continuation of his stellar play so far in 2014-15, with the 27-year-old registering two goals and seven assists in 12 appearances for the Biancocelesti this term. Stefano Pioli has fielded him largely on the right flank, often as far forward as possible in the attacking trident of the coach’s preferred 4-3-3 formation.

Candreva has improved almost beyond recognition since his short spell with Juventus four years ago, developing both his technical ability and tactical intelligence. No longer the naive player he often appeared under Alberto Zaccheroni in Turin, he has shown himself capable of filling a variety of positions for both club and country.

Yet on Sunday, that versatility would appear to have been the undoing of Italy and Conte. Having watched Croatia equalise less than four minutes after Candreva’s fierce strike, both Luka Modric and Manuel Pasqual be substituted due to injuries just before the 30-minute mark.

If the loss of the Real Madrid star was expected to have the greater impact, the replacements were perhaps most indicative of the subsequent performances of the two sides. Croatia were able to call upon Inter’s much admired Mateo Kovacic, with the Azzurri choosing to send on Roberto Soriano of Sampdoria.

While he has been impressive for the Genovese side, Soriano is a functional player and far better at breaking up the opposition's attack than helping create one himself. Conte’s decision to hand him his debut also cost Italy Candreva’s creativity, with the Lazio man shuffling across to right wing-back as part of the reshuffle.

Fully serviceable in that role, Candreva’s loss was clearly felt in midfield where the team’s display represented the trio of players fielded there after Soriano’s introduction. Marchisio and Daniele De Rossi are fine players and comfortable on the ball, but they too are unlikely to create many opportunities for the attacking duo ahead of them.

Mario Balotelli’s injury left Conte with Ciro Immobile and Simone Zaza as his front two, and both players are better at finishing chances rather than making them. The match descended into a dull affair dominated by the visitors, Croatia enjoying no less than 61.9 per cent of possession according to WhoScored.com.

The only fireworks on show at San Siro were those tossed onto the field by the visiting supporters, with their actions causing play to be suspended, according to the UEFA website. Candreva was perhaps the only player to catch the eye for the home side, who at full time will consider themselves fortunate to have escaped with a share of the points.

Italy got off to a great start in their European qualifier against Croatia when Lazio midfielder Antonio Candreva blasted them in front after just 11 minutes. 

However, the lead lasted just four minutes. Croatia got back on terms thanks to an Ivan Perisic strike that Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon uncharacteristically let under his body. 

Perisic equalizes for the Croats! Questions to be asked of Buffon, there. #CRO https://t.co/zuqg3EDnI9 [via @6secondsavage]

— World Soccer Talk (@worldsoccertalk) November 16, 2014

The large travelling support in Milan celebrated the goal by throwing flares onto the pitch, which momentarily stopped the match. 

Flares put a stop to play & the fire brigade are brought out to remove them. #ITACRO https://t.co/bV2OKjxv0W [via @6secondsavage]

— World Soccer Talk (@worldsoccertalk) November 16, 2014

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Antonio Conte has had a strong start as Italian national team coach. This Sunday he faces what will be his toughest challenge until the European Championships two years from now—and he'll need to do some serious thinking in order to come out successful.

The game against Croatia at the San Siro may go a long way to deciding seeding for the tournament proper.  The World Cup this summer showed the Azzurri just how important that seeding can be. With qualification secured, a win in one of their last two matches would have assured the Italians a place in Pot 1 of the draw. But Cesare Prandelli mailed the games in, drawing both. The seed went to Switzerland instead, and Italy ended up in a group that ended up being their downfall.

A win at home against the group's toughest opposition could be vital to winning the group and getting an advantageous place in the draw. To get one, Conte may have to change how he lines up his team.

Through his first four games in charge, Conte has stuck to the 3-5-2 that he used to take Juventus to the pinnacle of the Italian game. To do so was practical. It was the system he's been using for two-and-a-half years. The core of the Azzurri was made up of the Juve players he'd called his own a month before. It was the perfect way to make the team function while he evaluated what he had in the player pool and how he may want to tweak things.

The time to tweak may be now.  For one thing, the player base that he had to base the 3-5-2 on, particularly in defense, won't be available to him this month. Leonardo Bonucci is suspended after seeing a red card for a professional foul against Malta last month and Football-Italia reported Thursday that Angelo Ogbonna may miss out with a muscle injury.

That leaves Giorgio Chiellini and Andrea Ranocchia as the only two options at center-back who have a senior cap, with 33-year-old Emiliano Moretti and rising star Daniele Rugani behind them.

Chiellini knows the 3-5-2 intimately, but Ranocchia has been uneven in a three-man back line under numerous coaches—including Conte's Azzurri. Moretti has experience in a three-man line at Giampiero Ventura's Torino, but to throw him out for his first international game in a big qualifier in the San Siro might be asking too much.

Conte could use Matteo Darmian in the position, as he did against Malta last month. Against a minnow like Malta, Darmian could almost be used as another wing-back with Bonucci and Chiellini guarding against any counterattacks, but against Croatia Darmian would be forced into a more defensive role—one that he's unfamiliar with to boot.

Given the losses in the back aren't the only reason that a four-man defensive look is the best way to approach Croatia. Recent history shows the 3-5-2 isn't the way to confront the Vatreni.

Two years ago at Euro 2012, an injury to Andrea Barzagli saw Cesare Prandelli adopt the 3-5-2 as an emergency measure. Daniele De Rossi dropped back into the center of a back three with Chiellini and Bonucci.  The emergency measure was a surprise success in the group opener against Spain, whose full-backs—the providers of width for Vicente Del Bosque—were pinned in their own half by the more advanced wing-backs. The same could not be said in the next game against Croatia.

Croatia deployed in a 4-4-2 and with two players on either side to deal with the wing-backs were less effective. Croatia's most dangerous attacks originated from the outside. That's especially true of the equalizing goal. While Mario Mandzukic benefited from a major individual error by Giorgio Chiellini, the 3-5-2's weakness against genuine wing play certainly played a part in allowing the service to come in.

The inherent weakness of the 3-5-2, the one wrinkle in the shirt that dogged Conte right up to his departure from Juve was its vulnerability to high-quality wing play. Arjen Robben showed it in the Champions League quarterfinal two years ago, carving up the Bianconeri's left wing-backs. Jose Callejon showed off a similar flair in Napoli's victory over Juventus at the San Paolo this past March. Even that early, that match had relatively little impact on the title race, but the need to defend the wings was such that before Conte resigned in Turin, he was pushing for the players to completely overhaul his system and play in a 4-3-3.

Conte was accused of being stuck in his ways at Juventus as time went on, but that claim isn't entirely fair to him. He stayed with the 3-5-2 for so long in Turin mainly because it got his best players onto the field and put them into positions where they could succeed. If he tried to change with the players he had, they wouldn't have been able to perform at optimal levels. Before he settled on that system, he had made Juve winter champions in 2011-12 playing mainly a 4-3-3 and had planned to install a version of the 4-2-4 before the acquisitions of Andrea Pirlo and Arturo Vidal made him rethink his plans.

As the manager of the national team, Conte has no such problems. He has the pick of the Italian player pool to form his 23-man-roster.  Indeed, the roster he has picked for this game and the subsequent friendly against Albania has the right mix of players to put a potent 4-3-3 onto the field.

Tactics should adjust to the opponent, and the 3-5-2 is a poor fit for the Italians against Croatia. Could Conte use it and win? He could. But to have the best chance at victory, an adjustment should be made.

Tinkering too much can prove detrimental—the World Cup in Brazil taught every Italian that in a very painful way—but making the right adjustments at the right time is the mark of the best in the coaching ranks.  It's time that Conte showed us that he truly belongs with the biggest names of coaching and make the changes necessary to combat Croatia effectively.

For a forward, timing is everything. Fractions of a second can make the difference between meeting a cross or missing it, taking a through-ball in stride or overrunning it, slipping a shot into the bottom corner of the net or watching a goalkeeper push it away with his fingertips. 

Mario Balotelli is familiar with these equations (even if his critics would argue he still has not truly mastered them). His marketing team at Puma, perhaps a little less so. How else to explain the full-page advert that appeared in Gazzetta dello Sport on the day after Antonio Conte’s first competitive game in charge of Italy?

It featured Balotelli, stood with arms apart, wearing his country’s No. 9 shirt. Beside him was the word “THEN,” crossed out with a thick red line. Underneath that, the word “NOW.”

At best this was misleading. At worst, a little humiliating. Readers would only have needed to flip back a couple of pages to find a match report confirming that Balotelli had played no part in Italy’s Euro 2016 qualifying win over Norway—a match for which he was suspended. Most of them will already have known that the player was not even called up to Conte’s first national team squad.

The manager explained his decision at the time, as reported by Sky Sports, suggesting Balotelli had enough on his plate with adapting to life in Liverpool. He stressed that he would continue to keep tabs on the player, adding, “I make selections not exclusions, which is something completely different.”

Even so, Conte’s decision to leave Balotelli out of that first squad, and subsequently also his second one, felt like a statement from the manager. For the last four years, Balotelli had been a fixture of Cesare Prandelli’s starting XI.

Conte was making clear that Balotelli could no longer even take a place in the squad for granted. He might also have been delivering a broader message to a cynical public. Eyebrows had been raised when it emerged that a significant portion of Conte’s reported €4.1 million salary would be paid by Puma, who happen to be the national team’s sponsor.

Would he be under pressure to include Balotelli, as a player who had ties to that brand? Conte dismissed the idea out of hand, as reported by FourFourTwo: 

"Will PUMA interfere in squad selections? Nothing and nobody can force my decisions. If you know Antonio Conte, you should know that."

And yet, when Conte finally did call Balotelli up at the third time of asking this week, the same subject was raised. Cynics contended that the manager must finally have succumbed to pressure from his sponsor. After all, how else could you explain calling up a player who had scored just twice in 14 games since moving to Liverpool? 

Conte was barely even prepared to dignify such insinuations with a response, dismissing them as “bar-room talk” (Quotes in Italian, via Gazzetta dello Sport). He was absolutely right to do so.

Because for all that it is true that Balotelli is out of form at present, the notion that a national team manager should simply ignore such a talent is frankly a little ridiculous. The bald facts are that Balotelli was Italy’s leading scorer in World Cup qualifying—grabbing five goals despite missing half of the Azzurri’s 10 games. He was one of just two players to find the net for the Azzurri at the finals in Brazil last summer. 

Nobody is suggesting that those numbers should guarantee Balotelli a place, and his listless performance in Italy’s defeat to Uruguay will linger long in the memory of many fans. So will the remarks of team-mates such as Gigi Buffon and Giorgio Chiellini, who made thinly-veiled criticisms of Balotelli’s approach in the wake of their country’s elimination, per Reuters (h/t SBS). 

But Conte would need to have some exceptional alternatives up front to be able to overlook such a player altogether. Italy, right now, do not.

In four games so far, Conte has used five different forwards—Ciro Immobile, Simone Zaza, Mattia Destro, Sebastian Giovinco and Graziano Pelle. All are talented and hard-working players who have earned their opportunities, but the results, so far, have been mixed. After a positive start, with 2-0 wins over Holland and Norway, Italy made hard work of beating Azerbaijan and Malta by a single goal each. 

In a sense that is par for the course. Italy have a long history of labouring through qualifying for major tournaments, and of playing down to their opposition. But at the very least we can say that Italy are not dominating opponents so emphatically as to presume they have already found the perfect line-up.

The presence of Giovinco, who has a hard time getting a game at Juventus and is yet to score this season, also further undermines the argument that Balotelli should be excluded on the basis of club form. Even Destro, despite a phenomenal touches to goals ratio, finds himself stuck behind Francesco Totti at Roma, while Immobile and Zaza have endured mixed starts to this season.

So why not call Balotelli up for a closer look? Conte has made it very clear that he is offering the player no guarantees. "If you make a mistake, you come once and don't come back," said the manager this week, as reported by ESPN FC.

Balotelli has made plenty of those in his career. But he has also scored plenty of goals. He deserves his chance, just like everyone else, to convince Conte that he is worth having around.

Mattia Perin will never forget his 20th birthday. That was the day when he spoke to Gigi Buffon, his goalkeeping hero, for the very first time. Sadly, the circumstances were not quite what Perin had been hoping for. He had just endured one of the worst afternoons of his young career, conceding six times as his Pescara team was routed by Buffon’s Juventus.

Although hardly the chief culprit in this defeat, Perin should have done better on at least a couple of the goals. He left the pitch in a daze, but as he did so, Buffon came over for a hug. The Italian No. 1 told him not to give up after one little setback, encouraging him to stay “spensierato”—carefree. (Quotes in Italian, via Eurosport.) 

It is a mindset that comes naturally to Perin, a man with a well-earned reputation for mischief. He told Gazzetta dello Sport (quotes in Italian) with some delight in 2012 about the time when he lied to his dad that he had got a girl pregnant. One of his earlier posts on Twitter featured a photo of a newspaper article claiming that people who make more jokes are more intelligent. 

Still, he did not have much to laugh about during that painful 2012-13 season with Pescara. This was his first full campaign in the top flight, and it went disastrously. Perin conceded 66 goals in 29 games before losing his place in both the Pescara team and Italy’s Under-21 side. Adding insult to injury, his replacement at club level was Ivan Pelizzoli—a man who had been his backup the year before at Padova in Serie B.

And yet, even in the midst of those struggles, Perin still offered glimpses of his talent. Light on his feet and blessed with exceptional reflexes, he has always been a brilliant shot-stopper. In February he made a jaw-dropping 15 saves during Pescara’s smash-and-grab win away to Fiorentina.

Performances such as that one convinced his parent club, Genoa, to give Perin a chance when he returned to them in the summer of 2013. He was not expected to start right away, but he wound up winning the job in time for the start of the new season and never looking back.

Perin recorded 11 clean sheets in 37 games for the Grifone during that first campaign. His 88 saves were, according to Squawka.com, the joint-fourth most of any goalkeeper in Serie A. 

It was enough to earn him a place in Italy’s World Cup squad. Although he would not make an appearance at the tournament, he described the opportunity to spend time learning from Buffon at close quarters as a dream come true. (Video in Italian)  

The Juventus captain was happy to have Perin around, too. They have struck up a close bond over these last two years, with Buffon telling Sky Sport this week that he considers the Genoa player like a “little brother,” per gianlucadimarzio.com.

Looking back on it all now, though, the veteran might also wonder if he taught his adopted sibling too much. Because on Wednesday Perin finally exacted revenge for that ruined birthday two years ago, helping Genoa to defeat the Bianconeri 1-0 at the Marassi—on the occasion of Buffon’s 500th appearance for Juventus, no less.

With Juventus struggling to impose themselves for large parts of the game, Perin was not required to make a huge number of saves—just four, in fact, according to whoscored.com—but the ones he did make were crucial. His one-handed block of an Alvaro Morata blast in the 88th minute was nothing short of stunning.

Nor was it the first time this season that his saves had earned his team points in games that they might otherwise have lost. He made six stops during Genoa’s 0-0 draw away to Fiorentina in September, and then seven a week later during a 1-0 win over Lazio.  

His form is such that he is already being discussed as the long-term heir to Buffon for Italy. He has some competition for that position. Buffon is not going anywhere for a little while yet, and 27-year-old Salvatore Sirigu remains the front-runner to replace him when he does stand down. The likes of Francesco Bardi, Simone Scuffet and Nicola Leali are also in contention to fill the role long term. 

But Perin, still just a few days shy of his 22nd birthday, is turning heads at the moment, a fact reflected by the transfer rumours that are beginning to swirl around him. The German magazine Kicker claimed this week that Liverpool have begun tracking the goalkeeper, per transfermarketweb.com, with the likes of Juventus, Roma and Milan already paying close attention.

A January move seems unlikely, but if he maintains his recent form, then a transfer next summer would be a distinct possibility. Genoa have rarely been shy about cashing in on emerging talent. And Perin has that in abundance.