Italy (National Football)

As if we needed any more proof, it seems Gianluigi Buffon simply oozes class.

The legendary Italian 'keeper's Euro 2016 campaign ended in tears following a penalty shootout defeat to Germany, but the 38-year-old's spirits don't seem to have taken too much of a hit.

The Juventus veteran was spotted on holiday playing football with some locals at the seaside town of Marina di Massa, near Pisa, Italy.

Buffon, whose professional career has spanned over 20 years, will return to action with the Italian champions when Serie A kicks off next month.

[Twitter, h/t Daily Mail]

For the Italian national team, the 2016 UEFA European Championship is over.  The players are back in Italy and will soon return to their clubs, some of which have already started preparing for the 2016-17 season.

For dedicated observers of the Azzurri, the next major item of interest will start in September, when new coach Giampiero Ventura leads the men in blue into qualifying for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.

World Cup qualifying is usually a more secure proposition for Italy.  They're usually in Pot 1 when the groups are drawn, giving them an easier road to qualification.

This time it's going to be different, though.  The seeding groups were determined on the FIFA world rankings, and Italy's poor record in friendly competitions, coupled with their group-stage crash in the World Cup in 2014, saw that ranking suffer.

In June 2015, the Azzurri were presented with a rare thing: a friendly match that mattered.  The Italians went into the game knowing that if they won, they would secure a top seeding in the qualifying draw that summer.  Anything less would see them passed by the likes of Croatia, Wales, Slovakia and Austria, dropping them into Pot 2 and, potentially, a difficult qualifying draw.

The worst ended up coming to pass.  A 52nd-minute goal by Eder (no relation to the Brazilian-born Italy international) condemned the Azzurri to their first defeat under Antonio Conte at the worst possible time.

When the draw was made that July in St. Petersburg, Russia, Italy were presented with what looked like a worst-case scenario—they were grouped with Spain.

As the Azzurri struggled in the buildup to the Euros, it looked less and less like the Italians would be able to count on the automatic qualification that is usually considered a given.  It looked more like they would be fighting for second place and a spot in the playoff.  But now, Italy's prospects for making Russia directly look far brighter.

Things started to appear different at the Euros.  Conte took an injury-depleted roster that was expected to have trouble getting out of the group stage and took it all the way to a sudden-death penalty shootout in the quarterfinals against world champions Germany.  

He did it by instilling a team ethos that saw the entire team play as the ultimate unit, with a tactical system which turned the team into far more than the sum of its parts.  Had they beaten the Germans, they would likely have been favorites for the championship.

Spain, on the other hand, looked like a shell of the side that dominated world football from 2007 to 2012.

They looked too comfortable, locked into the tiki-taka system instilled by Luis Aragones and Vicente del Bosque, who looked out of ideas as Croatia attacked the game and came from a goal down to drop them into second place in the group, condemning them to a round-of-16 tie with Italy.

In that match, Conte's tactics stifled Spain's best players and forced David De Gea into a series of jaw-dropping saves.  Italy's 2-0 win put an official end to the era of Spain.  All of a sudden the team of the last decade was the one on the decline.

The matchup between Spain and Italy will decide the group, so we'll leave it to last for a moment and quickly run down the other four teams in the group.

Italy's first match of the competition will come against Israel.  The Azzurri have played the Israelis three times, all of them competitive fixtures.  They won a both legs of a qualifying tie for the 1962 World Cup and drew with them in the group stage of the World Cup proper eight years later.

They haven't made a major tournament since then, but they came close in qualifying for Euro 2016.  They won their first three games, including a surprising 3-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina, who were tipped by many to qualify out of Group B along with Belgium.

After that hot start, though, the bottom dropped out.  They only won one more game, against Andorra, and finished four points off the group's playoff spot.  They're plucky but not in Italy's league.

Albania surprised a lot of people by qualifying for the Euros ahead of Denmark in Group I.  They were helped along by an awarded win against Serbia after crowd trouble in Belgrade, as well as a shock win to beat Portugal in the group opener.  Their Italian coach, Gianni De Biasi, has turned them into a well-drilled unit that could steal a point or two from the Italians if they aren't careful—but if the Azzurri are on their game they should win.

As for the minnows of the group, Macedonia has never played Italy, but finished Group C of Euro qualifying tied for last after suffering a stunning and embarrassing stoppage-time loss to Luxembourg.  And Liechtenstein...is Liechtenstein.

But direct qualification will come down to Italy and Spain—and that will be determined by how well they handle their respective transition periods.  Both teams are changing coaches going into the competition—and Spain may be changing eras.

The transition for Italy will be relatively smooth.  Conte's departure to Chelsea has been known for months, and Giampiero Ventura was named as his successor before the Euros began.

The former Torino coach has long been a disciple of a 3-5-2 system similar to Conte's, which will help ease the transition.  

Ventura also has a history with many of the men currently in the Italy setup.  He coached Matteo Darmian, Ciro Immobile and Angelo Ogbonna at Torino and superstar defender Leonardo Bonucci at Bari.  He has a knack for bringing out the best in players.

All Ventura has to do is get individual game-by-game decisions right, keep the team's intensity up and integrate younger players like Domenico Berardi into the side.  So long as he doesn't deviate too far from Conte's blueprint, he'll have a formidable team—especially once injured midfielders Marco Verratti and Claudio Marchisio return.

Spain, on the other hand, is bordering on a crisis.  Del Bosque is no longer coach, but there was no succession plan, and his replacement is unknown.  

Whoever comes in will likely bring something new to the tactical setup, while players like Sergio Ramos and Gerard Pique will be the wrong side of 30 and Andres Iniesta has insinuated he could retire from international competition after the Italy loss.  La Roja could be looking at wholesale turnover in key personnel, from the man in the manager's office to the roster.

At the most basic level, the Italians have shown the world that—after years of being a whisker away—they can beat Spain.  Given the fact that the 3-5-2 has proved difficult for La Roja to counter in recent years, they could again struggle with the Azzurri. 

The head-to-head matchups will be in October, at the Juventus Stadium in Turin, and in September 2017, in an as-yet-to-be-determined location in Spain.  Whoever gets the upper hand in those matchups will likely win the group—and thanks to recent events, Italy's prospects look much better than they did a month ago.

A subplot to Italy's journey through the knockout rounds of the 2016 UEFA European Championship concerned the Nazionale's future manager.

In April, it was announced that manager Antonio Conte would leave the Azzurri when his two-year contract was up and take the vacant job at Chelsea in the English Premier League.  As the knockout rounds commenced, broadcasters pointed out continually that he was perhaps in his last moments in the job.

There was some backlash around the announcement.  Conte was criticized for walking out on the team in the lead-up to the Euros, and some suggested that his impending departure would cause the team to lose focus.

Such concerns were patently absurd.  National teams play tournaments with the knowledge that their coach is moving on to a new adventure almost every year.  Just two years ago, the Netherlands took third place at the World Cup knowing full well that Louis van Gaal was headed to Manchester United.  A decade ago, the Azzurri themselves won the World Cup knowing that Marcello Lippi would be replaced after the tournament was over.

The tournament's results certainly show that such concerns were baseless—Conte took a roster devastated by pre-tournament injuries and turned it into the most cohesive unit at Euro 2016.  He's left the Azzurri with a solid foundation —one that his successor, Giampiero Ventura, can develop as the next generation arrives in Savoy blue.

After shattering expectations at the Euros, it will be difficult to see Conte leave without developing this team any further.  But the former Juventus boss was always likely to go.  He is the kind of coach that thrives on the everyday contact with players that coaching a club provides.

But the ultimate trigger for his departure was certainly his running battle with Italy's clubs, who consistently blocked his attempts to organize more training camps for the national team outside of FIFA's designated international calendar.  He was forced to cancel plans for such a camp after the Lega Serie A insisted that players from teams involved in European competition be exempt.

He also lost a battle to have the final of the Coppa Italia played earlier than planned so he could have more time with his charges.  After the quarterfinal loss to Germany, Conte referred to his battles with both the clubs and the media, telling reporters (h/t ESPN FC), "If I'm honest, I never felt supported by anyone."

Even during official international periods he had issues with some teams—last fall's spat with Napoli over Lorenzo Insigne, whom the club held back from the national team due to injury claims, may have been a factor in the talented forward's reduced role in France.

It was clear that he was tired of it.  Rather than be criticized for making his departure so public, he should be praised for giving FIGC president Carlo Tavecchio ample time to search for his replacement.

The FIGC didn't have such a luxury when Conte took over two years ago—the resignations of team manager Cesare Prandelli and federation president Giancarlo Abete after the team's World Cup failure left Italian football scrambling.  Once Conte reached his decision, Tavecchio was able to take the time to ensure that he would pick the right man to take the Azzurri forward.

Ventura certainly fits the bill.  While not a flashy pick like coaching stars like Fabio Capello or Carlo Ancelotti would have been, the 68-year-old Genoa native is the perfect man to mold the new generation of Italian internationals and could provide some much-needed continuity as well.

Ventura's playing career was about as nondescript as could be.  He grew up in Sampdoria's youth system but only ever played one year above Serie D.

He returned to Samp to start his coaching career, working in their youth sector until moving on to the amateur ranks as a head coach.  In 1985 he brought Entella up to the professional leagues and spent the rest of the 1980s and early '90s with several teams in Serie C1 and C2, the precursors to today's Lega Pro.

He got his first taste of Serie B in 1993, when he was hired by Venezia, then owned by Maurizio Zamparini.  He finished sixth that first year but couldn't improve on that finish and was fired after the 1994-95 season—an impressive run, considering Zamparini's borderline madness when it comes to sacking his coaches.

In the wake of his departure from Venezia, he dropped back down to Serie C1 and coached Lecce to successive promotions.  But he didn't helm the southern outfit in Serie A—instead he dropped back down to the second division with Cagliari and quickly led them to the top flight.

This time he was kept on, and he made his Serie A coaching debut with the Isolani in 1997, leading them to an impressive 12th-place finish.

He wouldn't stay long.  In two years he was back in Serie B with his old club Sampdoria, trying in vain to get them back into the top flight.

For the next 10 years he would bounce around the lower divisions, from Udinese back to Cagliari to a reformed Napoli still picking themselves up from bankruptcy.  He returned to Serie A at Messina in 2005 but couldn't keep the team out of the relegation zone.

By 2007 he was back in Serie B again, this time with Pisa.  This is where his belated rise to prominence began.

He was impressive in that first season and began to show the first real signs of being able to take talented players and work magic.  He turned an on-loan Alessio Cerci into a rising star and unexpectedly made the promotion playoff.  He was sacked the next year after failing to replicate those results, but his hand in developing the future of the national team was about to begin.

He moved from Pisa to Bari, where he ironically replaced Conte.  He was entrusted with two loanee center-backs from Genoa.  You may know their names: Andrea Ranocchia and Leonardo Bonucci.  They formed an excellent partnership and led the team to a 10th-place finish., and the next summer they had moved on to Inter Milan and Juventus, respectively.  Ranocchia hasn't quite met the potential he showed under Ventura, but Bonucci has catapulted to superstardom and is quite possibly the best center-back in the world today.

Ventura didn't last through the entirety of his second season in Bari and was back in the second division by the beginning of the 2011-12 season, when he took over at Torino.  The once-proud Granata had been in Serie B for several years, and Ventura immediately initiated a climb back to the top flight, achieving promotion in his first year.

He was again entrusted with several talented youngsters, many of whom have since evolved into international-level players.  Two Italian players from these Euros, Matteo Darmian and Angelo Ogbonna, came of age with his Granata, as did Poland's Kamil Glik.

Sought-after left-back Bruno Peres also garnered attention on his watch, and when he got his hands back on Cerci he paired him with Ciro Immobile and turned them into one of the best forward tandems the club had ever seen.  

Even after selling the pair off in the summer of 2014, he brought Torino through the group stage of the '14-15 Europa League and made the round of 16 with a historic victory over Athletic Bilbao at the San Mames—the first of its kind for an Italian team.

What's important in all of this is the way he has developed younger players.  Italy is in the midst of a generational shift.  The last vestiges of the last wave of great forwards like Alessandro Del Piero and Francesco Totti are gone, and the likes of Insigne, Federico Bernardeschi, Andrea Belotti (another Ventura disciple from Torino) and Domenico Berardi are going to have to take the reigns.

The defensive line is about to enter a similar phase.  Andrea Barzagli said early last season that the Euros would be his last tournament, and Giorgio Chiellini is 31 years old and has lost important chunks of the last two seasons to injury.  Italy's center-backs of the future are in place, but Daniele Rugani and Alessio Romagnoli are going to have to be shepherded through the early days of their international careers as well.

Ventura's proven track record with bringing players through the ranks makes him perfect to oversee such a fluid moment for the Azzurri.

It also won't hurt that the tactics Conte instilled over his two years may not change much.  Ventura is very much a disciple of the 3-5-2—according to WhoScored.com, Torino lined up exclusively in that formation last season.  That continuity, plus Ventura's familiarity with many of the key contributors in the roster, will cushion the blow of the coaching change, allowing Italy to more easily pick up where they left off and continue to improve.

In getting to the quarterfinals of the Euros—and to do it through the opposition he faced to get there—was a huge accomplishment for Conte.  It's a shame that he isn't going to stay to see the seeds he planted bear fruit, but in Ventura he will leave the Azzurri in capable hands that can help shape the team for the future.

On Saturday night in Bordeaux, France, two titans of football went head-to-head.

The quarterfinal match between Italy and Germany had been hailed as worthy of being the final of the 2016 UEFA European Championship, and the game lived up to its hype. The two teams waged a pitched battle at the Stade de Bordeaux in the mold of some of the classics.

It took 120 minute to try to separate them, but all efforts to do so were in vain. The score was locked at 1-1 when referee Viktor Kassai blew his whistle for the final time—but that was only the beginning. The standard five-round shootout wasn't enough to determine a winner, either. After a European Championship-record nine rounds, Germany won 6-5, eliminating Italy from a major tournament for the first time.

Italy went into the game having already exceeded expectations. Many pundits regarded Antonio Conte's team as the worst Italy would ever field at a major tournament. There was no proven goalscorer, and injuries to Claudio Marchisio and Marco Verratti in the months before the competition severely crippled the midfield.

The Azzurri were going to have to lean on Juventus' BBC defense. Made up of Andrea Barzagli, Leonardo Bonucci and Giorgio Chiellini and backed up by another B in legendary goalkeeper and captain Gianluigi Buffon, still playing at top level at age 38, they are one of the best defensive units in the game and have played together for six years at the club level. If they could keep teams out long enough, they could steal a goal at the other end and then hold out to win.

Expectations were such that scraping their way into the knockout rounds would have been considered a success. What they got was beyond what any fan could have hoped for.

Without high-level talent beyond his defense, Conte needed to rely on tactics to cause opponents trouble—and boy did he ever. He comprehensively outcoached Belgium's Marc Wilmots, shackling the high-powered offense of the world's second-ranked team and winning 2-0.

After slogging through a late 1-0 win against Sweden and losing by the same score with a second-string lineup against the Republic of Ireland, they came up against another big test in Spain. The two-time defending European champions hadn't lost to Italy since the 1994 World Cup, but Conte again got his tactics spot-on.

Italy attacked far more than anyone thought they would and stubbornly refused to let La Roja break them down. Spain didn't look capable of evening the score before Graziano Pelle slammed home an insurance goal for a 2-0 win.

If Italy had passed some stiff tests in the competition, Germany would be getting their first on Saturday. In the group stage, they beat Ukraine and Northern Ireland and played out a lifeless goalless draw with Poland. Winning the group with seven points, they eased into a round-of-16 game against Slovakia.

Italy fans likely remember just what the Slovakians can do to top teams a a major tournament—they beat the Azzurri 3-2 at the 2010 World Cup—but Germany easily dispatched them 3-0 to set up the quarterfinal showdown.

Die Mannschaft would have to pass their first real test with a 500-pound gorilla on their back—Germany had never beaten Italy in a competitive game. Indeed, the game was being played almost 10 years to the day of Fabio Grosso's famous goal in the 2006 World Cup semifinal. To get to the semis at the Euros, they would have to change history.

The game promised to be a showdown between superior talent and skill in one corner and tactics and team play in the other. But Germany's Joachim Low isn't a tactical slouch himself, and he decided to alter his shape to counter Conte's ever-present 3-5-2.

It was a risky move, especially for Low, who knows the dangers of tactical shifts like this firsthand. At Euro 2012, Low changed things around before the semifinal against Italy in an effort to shackle a rampant Andrea Pirlo but completely unbalanced his side. He took the brunt of the blame for the ensuing 2-1 loss.

This time, Low took away one of his creative midfielders, namely Julian Draxler, and added Benedikt Howedes to form a three-man back line of his own. The 3-4-3 formation was in direct competition with the 3-5-2 the Italians had executed so well throughout the tournament.

At the end of the day, the change wasn't nearly a mistake to the degree it was four years ago, but it wasn't exactly beneficial. The team was obviously getting used to the new system, and their passing, usually so fast-paced, slowed to a crawl early on.

The net effect was the two teams just cancelled each other out. Germany didn't ever get their tempo up to the point where they were pulling Italy's players apart from each other. They had the lion's share of possession—58.7 percent, according to WhoScored.com—but were rarely able to turn that into goalscoring opportunities.

Indeed, Italy got in the game's first shot, a fifth-minute effort by Emanuele Giaccherini that was blocked for a corner kick. Germany took over and put ball after ball into the box but couldn't find the ball that would unlock their opponents.

The first half didn't see another real opportunity until the 41st minute, when Joshua Kimmich's cross from the right wing found striker Mario Gomez, who headed over the bar. A minute later, the ball ping-ponged around the Italian box and fell to Thomas Muller, who could only fire right at Buffon.

Italy got their own blow in just before halftime, when Giaccherini slipped through the defense to latch onto a long ball from Bonucci. It wasn't a carbon copy of the move that resulted in Italy's opening goal against Belgium, but Giaccherini's pullback across the goal was blasted by Stefano Sturaro, whose shot was blocked by Jerome Boateng.

Italy wasn't faring all that well, either. Already weakened in midfield, the Azzurri were down to the dregs coming in. Sturaro was only playing because Daniele De Rossi—a key cog in Conte's system—was injured and his most direct replacement, Thiago Motta, was suspended because of yellow-card accumulation.

The midfielders who were left—Giaccherini, Sturaro and Marco Parolo—struggled against their counterparts on Saturday. Italy was hardly able to string together more than a few passes before losing possession. Pelle in particular was poor with his distribution from the top of the formation, often ballooning balls far beyond their intended targets.

It allowed Germany to start making their pressure pay. In the 53rd minute, Gomez managed to set up Muller at the top of the box, but his shot was cleared off the line with an acrobatic backheel by Alessandro Florenzi.

The Roma man was soon to go from hero to goat as Germany finally opened the scoring. In the 65th minute, Manuel Neuer launched a ball up the left side. Florenzi got to it first but headed it awkwardly into the path of Gomez, who took it into the wing and then found the overlap of Jonas Hector. The resulting cross was deflected into the path of Mesut Ozil, who beat a pair of defenders to tap home.

It was nearly 2-0 three minutes later, when Chiellini and Gomez tangled for the ball in the box and the Juventus man redirected it toward his own net from point-blank range. Buffon showed why he is still regarded among the world's elite by making a one-handed save.

It would prove a crucial intervention. As Florenzi lined up a corner kick in the 77th minute, Italy's lifeline came over in the form of a handball in the box by Boateng. The defender, who has been so good at this tournament, made his leap with his arms extended over his head. Chiellini was close to him when he sent a flick, but Boateng should have known better than to go in with his arms up.

Up to the penalty spot stepped, of all people, Bonucci. The center back has come a long way from the man who ballooned over during a shootout in the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup. He took a quick stutter at the end of his run-up before firing home to Neuer's left.

The rest of the game, normal time and extra, passed fairly uneventfully—unless you were an Italy fan wondering when Conte was going to use his substitutes.

Conte has always jealously guarded his subs. One of his few weaknesses as a coach is he often waits way too long to deploy his reserves. The only change made in normal time was an enforced one, as an exhausted Florenzi came off for Matteo Darmian. But Conte waited until the second half of extra time to use his second, replacing Eder with Lorenzo Insigne.

He saved his final change for the dying seconds, throwing on Simone Zaza expressly to take a kick in the shootout. He may have been better served by putting on Insigne far earlier and by using either Zaza or Stephan El Shaarawy to have a few runs at a back three that was visibly tiring in the final stages.

That's not to say he deserves blame for the loss—his setup effectively throttled the world champions for 120 minutes. But his handling of his subs clearly didn't pay the dividends he was hoping for. That was especially true of Zaza, who stepped up for Italy's second kick of the shootout, blazing over after one of the strangest run-ups anyone has ever seen.

But Buffon backed up his Juventus teammate. He kept Muller out. Then Ozil hit the post. Ready to give Italy the lead was Pelle, who fired wide. On the fifth round of kicks, Bonucci stepped up and tried to go the other way to his first try, but Neuer was ready and stopped it. Only a Bastian Schweinsteiger miss would keep Italy alive, and he duly hooked the ball over the bar, sending the shootout to sudden death.

Italy's less experienced penalty-takers came on a novel approach to beating one of the best goalkeepers in the world. Rather than place their efforts, they would just blast it down the middle. Giaccherini and Parolo both did it. As did Mattia De Sciglio, whose shot cannoned in off the underside of the bar.

As sudden death moved on, Italy came tantalizingly close to winning. Buffon got his fingertips to shots from both Kimmich and Boateng, but the balls were placed just well enough that he couldn't keep them out. When Darmian fired a terrible penalty that was easily saved by Neuer, Hector was given the opportunity to win the game.

His shot was almost as bad as Darmian's, but it had more power, and it squirmed beneath Buffon, who was expecting to have to deal with the ball a lot closer to the post than it ended up being. And with that, Germany's hex when it comes to Italy was over.

This was a 50-50 game all the way. Penalties seemed like the only way to separate them, and they finally did. Italy go home beaten but with honor. Conte told Rai Sport (h/t Football Italia) after the game that "Being beaten by Germany on penalties is no shame." He's absolutely right.

This team deserves to be remembered as one that defied the odds and played far greater than the sum of its parts. Italy were expected to turn in one of the worst performances any Azzurri team had put up in a major competition. Instead, they came a whisker away from beating the world champions for a semifinal berth.

Italy's performance in this game and this tournament is something to be celebrated and built upon. World Cup qualifying starts in September, and Italy are set to share a group with Spain. If the Azzurri play the way they did on Saturday, they will be well on their way to Russia.

Italy have been dealt a big blow ahead of their Euro 2016 quarter-final with Germany, as midfielder Daniele De Rossi is set to be sidelined for the Saturday clash with a calf injury.

Continue for updates.

Sturaro to Stand In as De Rossi Replacement

Wednesday, June 29

Reuters (via Eurosport) reported on Wednesday that De Rossi will be out for the quarter-final, adding that Stefano Sturaro will step in as De Rossi's replacement.

Sky Sports News' Kaveh Solhekol outlined the potential importance of his absence:

De Rossi, 32, was substituted with a problem in the second half of Italy's excellent 2-0 win over Spain in the round of 16 and replaced by Thiago Motta.

In the 36 minutes he played, Motta was given a yellow card, his second of the tournament, and is now suspended for the encounter with world champions Germany in Bordeaux, France.

Thus, manager Antonio Conte will play Sturaro as deputy in central midfield.

The 23-year-old played all 90 minutes in Italy's 1-0 loss to the Republic of Ireland in Group E, and his only other tournament action in France so far was five minutes in the Azzurri's 1-0 defeat of Sweden.

However, he has experience playing in big matches with his club team, Juventus. Per Italian football expert David Amoyal, he "came up huge" for the Old Lady as they got past Real Madrid in the 2015 UEFA Champions League semi-finals.

It is  currently unclear when De Rossi will return, but Conte will be desperate for him to get back to fitness for a potential semi-final match—most likely against hosts France—as his experience could be invaluable.

He has played a key role so far, and Italy have surprised many at Euro 2016 by defeating Spain and notching an impressive 2-0 victory over well-fancied Belgium in the group stages.

The bottom of the knockout draw at the 2016 UEFA European Championship was a daunting sight.

Among the eight teams on this side of the bracket were five former world champions.  France, England, Spain, Italy and Germany toted 11 World Cups combined into this phase of the competition, as well as nine combined Euro wins.  It looked like a series of titanic clashes was in order.

Despite the incredible capitulation of England to a Cinderella Iceland team, this side of the knockout round is still set to deliver some incredible football.  Iceland and France will be fascinating to watch, but the tie of the round will be a matchup of two titans of the world game: Italy vs. Germany.

These are two of the most successful footballing nations in the world.  They have won four World Cups apiece—only Brazil have won more.  They have also combined for four European titles.  On a club level, the two countries have combined for 19 European Cups.  This is truly a matchup of heavyweights, a clash worthy of a final.  And the winner will likely be the clear favourite to win the tournament.

Italy and Germany came into the tournament in very different situations.  The Germans—fresh off earning their fourth star by winning the 2014 FIFA World Cup—won their qualifying group, but not without a few complications.

Die Mannschaft have lost seven total games since they beat Argentina at the Maracana in Rio de Janeiro.  Some of those losses were depressing, including three on German soil.  In the summer of 2015, they wasted a 12th-minute lead at home to the United States and lost 2-1.  This past March, they hosted England in Berlin and took a 2-0 lead before crumbling, eventually losing to an Eric Dier goal in stoppage time.

They lost twice in qualifying, to Poland and the Republic of Ireland, and dropped a pre-tournament friendly to Slovakia in Augsburg—a game that included another blown lead.

In spite of these hiccups, the Germans came into the Euros as one of the nominal favourites.  On the other hand, the Italians were expected to have trouble just making the round of 16.  The Azzurri were missing their two best midfielders—Claudio Marchisio and Marco Verratti—to injury and didn't have a proven forward.  The general consensus was that Antonio Conte was bringing to France the worst team Italy had ever sent to a major tournament.

What they did have was an elite defence and the best tactical coach in the competition.  Conte has thrown criticism of his decisions back into the faces of their sources.  He has devised ingenious game plans to throttle two tournament favourites, Belgium and Spain.  His defence has suffocated teams, allowing only 12 shots on target in four matches.  Only one of those shots turned into a goal—and that came in the group-stage finale, which was a dead rubber for the Azzurri.

The Italians have established themselves as the best unified force in the tournament.  Their team play has been astonishing.

Whenever an Italian is under pressure in possession, two more appear in the vicinity, and a quick sequence of passes helps keep possession.  They've combined to produce dangerous attacks.  The so-called "BBC" defence, pulled straight from five-time defending Serie A champions Juventus, practically moves as one mind.  And if a team manages to get past them, legendary goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon is there as a last line of defence.

Germany, of course, are no slouches either.  Their defence is anchored by centre backs Mats Hummels and Jerome Boateng.  Thomas Muller and a resurgent Mario Gomez provide goalscoring punch.  Toni Kroos and Sami Khedira anchor the midfield, while the likes of Julian Draxler and Mesut Ozil provide an element of individual creativity that the Italians sorely lack.  And they too boast a superlative goalkeeper in Manuel Neuer.

This clash of the titans is going to be very evenly matched.  The Germans boast one of the most talented squads left in the competition.  Conte's men have proved that they can compensate for a relative lack of individual quality with tightly girded team play and grit.

Saturday's game is going to come down to identifying individual weaknesses and exploiting them.  Whichever team does that will have probably overcome the most difficult redoubt between them and European glory.

Sure, there are still some strong teams left.  Belgium, who by losing the group managed to find themselves on the weak side of the draw, have recovered well from their opening loss to the Italians.  France, who Saturday's winner could meet in the semi-finals, are led by a strong midfield and have the force of a home crowd behind them.  Neither will be easy outs.

But they aren't dominant either.  In fact, compelling arguments can be made that neither of them would present Italy or Germany with as stern a test as they will face in each other.

For all their hype coming into the tournament, the Belgians—ranked second in the world by FIFA—were seriously exposed against Italy.  Without captain Vincent Kompany as an anchor, Belgium's back line can come unpinned fairly easily.  The Manchester City captain isn't the only man out either.  After Nicolas Lombaerts withdrew with an injury, coach Marc Wilmots had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to stock his team with defenders.

For all their offensive firepower, that back line is a major red flag, and if Romelu Lukaku and/or Eden Hazard get marked out of the game the way they were against the Azzurri, their attack becomes less of a cannon and more of a pop gun.

France, on the other hand, are a team that haven't played up to their potential through four games.  In the group stage they needed two goals in the 89th minute or later to beat Romania and Albania, then they played a stunted goalless draw against their best competition, Switzerland.  On Sunday in the round of 16, they trailed the Republic of Ireland at half-time before settling in the second half to win 2-1.

Italy and Germany won't be so forgiving.  If they meet either team in the semi-final and start that slowly, they are unlikely to have the same kind of opportunity to recover.

A poor start against Germany could see Joachim Low's side end up two or three goals up by the time the French respond, and the Italians can score a single goal and then rely on tactical defending to see the game through.  Their back three possess a unique knowledge of how to confront midfielder Paul Pogba, their Juve team-mate—and he hasn't shown the kind of game-changing form everyone was expecting from him.

Whoever gets through on Saturday will face a smaller degree of difficulty throughout the remainder of the tournament.  France and Belgium are certainly capable of winning against either Germany or Italy, but neither will provide the kind of challenge that the Azzurri and Die Mannschaft present to each other.

If Iceland pull off another surprise or Belgium are upset on the other side of the bracket, chances are the following rounds will be even easier, although Iceland could present Italy with a tricky task in that they would have to break the upstarts down in possession.

Whoever wins, and whoever their opponents might be, the winner of this clash of footballing giants has to be considered the strong favourite to lift the Henri Delaunay Trophy in Saint-Denis on July 10.

The king is dead.  Long live the king.

Two-time defending European champion Spain have been eliminated from the 2016 UEFA European Championship by Italy, and in emphatic fashion.  

The Azzurri played the perfect team game and came away with a deserved 2-0 victory and a date with Germany in the quarter-finals on Saturday.

Both teams had come into the round of 16 having lost their group finale, although the circumstances of those defeats were different.  

The Italians had locked in the top spot in Group E with a game to spare and had put out a reserve lineup against the Republic of Ireland.  Even that team held defensively for more than 85 minutes before a good ball by Wes Hoolahan and a miscommunication between defence and goalkeeper gave Ireland the win and a place in the knockout rounds.

Spain, on the other hand, suffered a far more disheartening setback against Croatia.  Needing a point to advance as winners of Group D, La Roja played their starters but gave up an early lead and lost 2-1.  It was their first setback in the European Championship since being eliminated from Euro 2004 by France in the quarter-finals, and it dropped them into second place in the group—and into the juggernaut section of the bracket.

Spain did come into the game with history on their side, though.  They hadn't lost a competitive match to Italy since the 1994 World Cup, a game known for two things: Roberto Baggio scoring a late winner and Mauro Tassotti rearranging Luis Enrique's face with an elbow.

That streak has been thrown into stark relief over the last eight years.  Since 2008, the two teams had matched up eight times, with Spain winning three to Italy's one, with four draws.  In competitive matches, though, La Roja held a supreme advantage.

Officially, the record was one win and three draws, but two of those draws saw Spain advance past the Azzurri on penalties—and the win was a 4-0 hammering in the Euro 2012 final.

Spain were favored coming in, but there was an air of competitiveness about this tie that hadn't been there in previous games, even as this Italy side was one of the worst—at least from the perspective of individual talent—that had ever gone to a major tournament.

The biggest reason Italy had a chance came not from the field, but the dugout.  Antonio Conte has often been criticised for his adherence to the 3-5-2 formation, but against Spain it is quite possibly the perfect system.

The Spaniards are reliant on their full-backs for width in attack.  They happen to employ some of the best in the world, and matching them with a traditional four-man defensive line is often suicide.

But against a three-man defence and a pair of wing-backs, it's a different story.  The wing-backs naturally push the full-backs further up the pitch, funnelling play into the back three.  When your back three happens to contain three of the best centre-backs in the game, breaking through can be a daunting prospect.

Italy have learned this lesson before.  Injuries forced former manager Cesare Prandelli to play a 3-5-2 against Spain in the group-stage opener of Euro 2012.  His team arguably played better in that match, and only a miscommunication in defence allowed Spain in for a 1-1 draw.

After abandoning the concept in the final and getting thrashed, Prandelli returned to it in the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup and dominated the early proceedings with a 3-4-3.  If Christian Maggio had been more clinical early in the game, Italy probably would have won.

The early stages of Monday's game looked like a carbon copy of that match.  The Italians came out and took possession early, playing Spain at their own game.  Less than two minutes in, Daniele De Rossi connected with Alessandro Florenzi on a beautiful diagonal ball.  A few passes later, Graziano Pelle fired a header from about 12 yards.  It was easily saved by David De Gea, but the first shot had been fired.

Six minutes later, De Gea needed a lot more of his considerable skills to palm a Pelle header off the line after an excellent delivery from Florenzi.  Two minutes later, Emanuele Giaccherini, who always seems to be in the thick of big games, had a bicycle-kick attempt tipped onto the post before a whistle brought play back for a high boot.

Meanwhile, the BBC defence of Andrea Barzagli, Leonardo Bonucci and Giorgio Chiellini was keeping Spain from getting their famous tiki-taka passing going.  The Spaniards were forced early and often to try to launch long balls toward Alvaro Morata, who was largely unable to beat his former Juventus teammates in the air.  By the time Spain finally got one of their trademark moves going, it was the 21st minute and resulted in a cross to no one from Jordi Alba.

Italy continued to make purposeful attacking moves.  Leonardo Bonucci stole the ball away in the 24th minute and drove the length of the field before sliding to Mattia De Sciglio, whose cross was put narrowly off target by Marco Parolo.  Five minutes later, Sergio Ramos nearly put another De Sciglio cross into his own net.

It was Italy, not Spain, who looked more likely to score, and they did 33 minutes in.  Eder slammed a free kick past the wall.  De Gea saved, but couldn't hold it, and Giaccherini—there's that guy again—was already past the defence to pounce.  The Spain goalkeeper managed to get a toe to it, but the challenge deflected it straight to Giorgio Chiellini, who tapped the ball in.

Foreshadowing from the #Euro2016 advertising boards? #ITA 🏆 pic.twitter.com/p1fLKfzoDj

— Bleacher Report UK (@br_uk) June 27, 2016

It must have been a cathartic moment for Chiellini, who has always seemed abandoned by Lady Luck in major international tournaments.  He has made critical mistakes, got hurt in big games and been fed on by a hungry Uruguayan, but on Monday, he scored the goal that ended up knocking Spain out of the Euros.

Spain began to get back into the game by pressing high when the back three was in possession, but they were still struggling to make clear-cut chances.  Their best opportunity of the first half was a shot from Andres Iniesta that was tamely deflected into the arms of Gianluigi Buffon.  Morata managed a header straight at the Italy No. 1 early in the second half.  

Italy, on the other hand, nearly had a second when Giaccherini was denied by a flying De Gea on the stroke of halftime.

Then Spain were given a window of opportunity.

In the 53rd minute, Conte made the one move in this game that could have been considered a mistake.  He took De Rossi off and inserted Thiago Motta at the base of the midfield.

The substitution took away some of the team's cohesion.  De Rossi's role in keeping Italy disciplined and compact probably hasn't been fully appreciated in this tournament until now.  Spain had more room to pass the ball, more time to think and managed to retain possession more when the Azzurri interrupted them.

But despite this slight drop, the Azzurri still played the kind of team game that has given them so much success over the last two-and-a-half weeks.  They had opportunities to extend the lead.  Eder missed a gilt-edged chance on 55 minutes after blasting by Gerard Pique at pace and firing a one-on-one shot right at De Gea.  Seven minutes later, he sent De Sciglio down the wing, but his cross got caught between Giaccherini's legs.

Between these forays forward, Spain ramped up the pressure.  With 15 minutes left, the screw tightened even more.  Iniesta pulled a save out of Buffon, who flew to stop a snapshot from Pique a minute later.  He denied the centre-back again from point-blank range, just as stoppage time began.

Less than a minute later came the hammer.  The Azzurri hustled the ball up the field after clearing a corner and started working toward the corner.  Substitute Lorenzo Insigne, who had jinked a defender out of his shoes to draw a save from De Gea five minutes earlier, spotted fellow sub Matteo Darmian unmarked on the right wing and executed a perfect cross-field pass.

Darmian took it down and crossed it.  The ball took a slight deflection that delivered it right to Pelle, who was making a run behind Pedro, who ended up defending in the confusion of the counter.  The striker's volley was a carbon copy of the shot that put Belgium away in Italy's opener, and the Azzurri were through.

For the second time in this tournament, Conte had thoroughly outcoached one of the teams that were considered favorites.  His tactics have sometimes been derided as negative—sometimes to the detriment of the sport—but Italy played toe-to-toe with Spain for long stretches, especially in the first half-hour.

There were some excellent individual performances—Chiellini was a rock and De Sciglio probably had his best game in three years—but Italy's strength is team play.  The midfielders support each other well with and without the ball.  The BBC, along with Buffon, practically plays as one mind.  With all 11 players adhering to Conte's excellent tactics, Italy can be a danger to any team.

That includes quarter-final opponents Germany.  The world champions looked out of sorts in the group stage before dispatching Slovakia with ease in the round of 16.  They will be the latest team to mount an assault on Buffon's goal, but if the Italians play the game they played on Monday, they will be just as tough to beat.

Italy are proving to be the best unit in the tournament, and they probably have the best coach in the tournament.  Conte once said that "you can't sit in a restaurant where it's €100 a head if you only had €10 in your pocket," as reported by ESPN.  It was a criticism of his former club Juventus' apparent lack of top-level talent at that point, but given the limitations of this roster, he's starting to prove himself wrong.

At this point, anything is possible for the Azzurri—they just need the right bounces.  After dethroning the champions, winning the tournament is becoming less of a dream and more of a tangible goal.

Spain's hopes of winning the European Championship for a third consecutive time were ended on Monday, as Italy's 2-0 victory saw La Roja succumb to their first tournament knockout defeat in a decade, as noted by Squawka. 

When Graziano Pelle scored the Azzurri's second unanswered goal in injury time, manager Antonio Conte could not contain his glee on the sideline.

The 46-year-old looked as if he was attempting to jump over the dugout as he celebrated a famous win. 

Conte's mood at the conclusion came in sharp contrast to the fury he had displayed for much of the performance.

[Twitter]

It's time to get down to business.

The group stage of the 2016 UEFA European Championship is over, and the knockout rounds begin on Saturday. For Italy, the round of 16 starts on Monday at 5 p.m. BST (noon ET), when they square off against fellow European titan and two-time defending champion Spain.

The Azzurri earned this marquee fixture after defying expectations and winning Group E with a game to spare, defeating pre-tournament favorites Belgium 2-0 and a punchless Sweden team 1-0 before losing the group finale 1-0 to the Republic of Ireland, a game that only had meaning for the Irish.

Spain was expected to be on the other side of the draw as favorites in Group D, but a blown lead and 2-1 loss to Croatia in their group finale on Tuesday saw the Vatreni go top and dropped Spain into Italy's lap.

If either team wants to win this tournament, it is going to have to navigate one of the most difficult routes in the history of the sport. The eight teams on this side of the bracket combine for a whopping 11 World Cups (four each from Germany and Italy and one each from Spain, England and France) and nine European Championships (three each from Germany and Spain, two from France and one from Italy).

If a team from that side wins the tournament, it would likely be following one of the most heroic runs in international football history. But the other three of those five nations at least get to wade into the knockout phase with games they are expected to win. Italy and Spain will have to put on their big-boy cleats from the outset.

It should be an excellent match. These are two teams that know each other extremely well. Monday's game will be the their ninth meeting since 2008—and the fifth competitive fixture.

Italy has only won one of those those games, a 2011 friendly in Bari. Spain have won three, including the final of Euro 2012. Of the remaining draws, two came in the knockout rounds of Euro 2008 and the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup. Spain won both via penalty shootouts.

That record belies how competitive this rivalry has been. Of the four games that didn't end in a tie, three were decided by only one goal. The exception, Spain's 4-0 win in the final four years ago, was a result of then-Italy manager Cesare Prandelli bungling the tactics and losing a player to injury after using all three of his substitutions.

The rest of the games have been much tighter. La Roja dominated the entire world between 2008 and 2012, but as much as a team that has as much success can have a bogey team, Italy was it.

Legendary Spanish player Xavi Hernandez explained why that was in an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport (h/t Football Italia). "Spain suffer when they don't have the ball," said the former Barcelona captain. "Italy don't. They stay chilled. That's the great difference between the two teams. Honestly in terms of philosophy, personality and competitiveness, you're the most inconvenient rival there can be for Spain."

He went on to praise Italy's mentality, saying Spanish players "had this idea that nothing could unnerve you" and that playing the Azzurri could be a psychological "handicap."

It's that history and that difference in style that marks this game as the potential match of the tournament—and it'll likely be a nail-biter.  What's more, Italy manager Antonio Conte's tactics might be exactly what Italy needs to take out Spain.

The two best games Italy played against Spain under Prandelli came when Prandelli deployed a three-man back line. In the group-stage of Euro 2012, Prandelli used the formation after an injury forced a reshuffle of his normal 4-3-1-2. Italy throttled Spain for most of the game, only allowing a sequence of opportunities on goal toward the end as fatigue set in.

The second, the semifinal of the 2013 Confederations Cup, saw Prandelli reshuffle his team specifically to counter Spain's threat. Lined up in a 3-4-3, the Azzurri controlled the vast majority of the game and fully deserved to win. Had Christian Maggio been a little more clinical with a pair of headers in the early going, they would have done just that.

The advantage of a three-man back line against Spain is clear. Ever since tiki-taka came into being, Spain have gotten width in the attack almost solely from their full-backs. In most cases, they succeed. Over the course of Spain's run of success, the full-backs generally won those battles, kicking the team attack into gear.

With Barcelona's Jordi Alba and Atletico Madrid's Juanfran filling those roles for Vicente del Bosque's team this time around, a traditional full-back is going to have a hard time winning that battle.

But a 3-5-2 or 3-4-3 is different. When faced with wing-backs, who naturally sit further up the field, Spain's full-backs are kept higher as well. That makes them less likely to join the attack and consequently funnels all of Spain's attacking efforts into the defensive trio of Andrea Barzagli, Leonardo Bonucci and Giorgio Chiellini.

It's fortunate, then, that Conte settle on the 3-5-2 before the tournament. The pure full-backs he brought, Matteo Darmian and Mattia De Sciglio, aren't anywhere near the levels of Alba or Juanfran and would likely get overrun if matched against them from a traditional position. But Conte's wing-backs can force them back toward their own end of the field.

From there they can help channel play into the clogged middle and serve as outlets for counterattacks—something Spain has looked vulnerable against in the tournament, especially against Croatia on Tuesday.

Del Bosque seems to have recognized the threat the 3-5-2 poses his team and, according to multiple reports (h/t Football Italia), has tested out a 4-3-3 in training, with Alvaro Morata moving out to the left wing and Aritz Aduriz coming in as the central striker. The idea would be to spread the Italian back three out with wingers and attack the space that opens up.

This idea has its merits, but isn't without its drawbacks. Morata has scored three times in the tournament, so it seems somewhat unwise to remove him from the position that will get him the most service in front of goal. It's also worth noting Morata spent a fair chunk of time at that position with Juventus this year—and it ruined his form.

Morata is going to be a key here. If he continues his run of form and is able to menace Gianluigi Buffon in goal, Italy could be in for long night. Of course, Morata is familiar with the Italy defense—he played against them in training every day for two years as a Juventus player. If that familiarity allows the so-called BBC to shut him down, though, Spain will have to go to Plan B in order to score.

However the managers deal with tactics, history tells us we're in for an excellent game between Italy and Spain. The two rivals are polar opposites on the field—one is all about defense, and the other focuses on attack. Spain are the more talented team, but Conte has already outcoached a team this tournament that is superior to his on paper.

If he does it again, he'll have passed one of his biggest tests as a manager—and Italy will be a major step closer to their second European Championship.