From the Champions League to the Under 20 World Cup, Italian football is another special night

ISTANBUL. We’ve never been world champions at the age of our twenties. Messi and Pogba succeeded, Haaland tried, but our Azzurrini never: until tonight’s final in la Plata against Uruguay – 11pm, live on Rai2 – the maximum of our harvest in an Under-20 World Cup was the last place on the podium in 2017. And that it is a special race is proved by the presence in the stands of the Estadio Único Diego Armando Maradona of a champion like Roberto Baggio who flew during the night from Istanbul, a guest of the Fifa president Infantino, to Argentina to see up close the young blue promises.

Starting as a bet, the Italy of the federal coach Nunziata has turned into the most beautiful reality despite our group not being complete: Miretti plus Scalvini plus Gnonto would have transmitted a lot of experience, and charisma, to a group that, as pointed out several times, he sees Serie A with binoculars. But Miretti, Scalvini and Gnonto, all three of them old enough to fly to Argentina, had other needs for a Club Italia that knows how to build a team and family: the first two in the Under 21 team are busy preparing for the European Championship in Romania and Georgia, Gnonto already at court Mancini with the Nations League upon us.

If, tonight, it goes well, there would be no parades or open-top buses in the streets of the Capital because a popular celebration for an under 20 title has never happened anywhere in the world. But, however it goes tonight, it would already a success if the spotlights of those teams in search of new ambitions and of those who can cultivate them were turned on to the golden or silver boys: Casadei and his teammates have shown that they know how to play modern football and bet on the strength of the group. The rest is done by the work of a group of federal coaches with a mission: feeling like a passerby, at a youth level, can distort the very mission of coaches in search of personal affirmation and, thus, distracted from teaching the particular to their students. Italy against Uruguay is worth the World Cup for the most promising young players, a beautiful showcase, perhaps the best there can be. «We don’t feel pressure, but pride in playing in a World Cup final, the dream of every boy who plays football», so Matteo Prati, Italy’s midfielder, Spal’s midfielder in the last season. Mezzala revelation in Argentina. —