Mancini tries to push the Under 21 team to the Olympics

“We have young players who aren’t here with us today, but who would have been and will be here until next November,” he let slip. Robert Mancini in the traditional pre-match press conference of Italy-England. And if on Monday he had answered direct questions relating to the most prominent excluded (Zaccagni, Casale, Kean and Zaniolo), this time the message was slightly more cryptic. In a national team that begins its journey towards the 2024 European Championship today against England, there are other absentees who make less noise but that does not mean they do not raise questions. This is the case of those boys who have been left at Paolo Nicolato’s Under 21 despite having what it takes to knock on the door of the senior national team, especially considering that the coach has chosen to continue with a rather particular line, which sees between the summoned very young elements such as Simone Pafundi.

Destiny Udogie, Fabiano Parisi, Samuele Ricci, Nicolò Fagioli, Tommaso Baldanzi: to want to interpret the unsaid, these would seem to be the five “unders” in the odor of jumping. Looking to the future, on the horizon of a 2026 World Cup in which participating becomes an obligation, we discover that none of the five would be so young: Udogie would be on the threshold of 24, Parisi of 26, Ricci of 25, a goal that Fagioli would exceed by few months. Different story for Baldanzi, the freshest of the company, born in March 2003. A list that could also include Fabio Miretti, not joined to the Under 21 team due to physical problems, and Lorenzo Colombo: in a Serie A in which they see goals from Italian forwards on the horizon, he could have used some training with the greats. But why, instead of opting for immediate promotion, did Mancini prefer to give them to Nicolato, especially since the Azzurrini will be playing a friendly match?

If on one hand we haven’t played a knockout match in a World Cup since the 2006 finalon the other hand there is the disturbing roster of the Under 21 in recent years, in great continuity with the results of the senior national team, which at least can boast the 2021 exploit at the European Championship. The Azzurrini have missed the last three Olympic events, whose pass is closely linked to the results in the category European Championships: the golden age of adventures under the orders of Cesare Maldini and Claudio Gentile now seems like a utopia. Since the second place in Israel 2013, with the team coached by Devis Mangia defeated in the final against Spain, the results have been bordering on the tragic: two eliminations in the first round, one semifinal, one quarterfinal.

Entering the top four in the tournament to be held this summer between Romania and Georgia means getting an Olympic visa: the strategy is therefore to cement the union of Nicolato’s Under 21 team, at the cost of stealing players from the senior national team. Otherwise the decision to give up on Udogie, author of a very good season with the Udinese shirt, or Parisi, another left-back who is proving to be more than valid in Serie A, even at the time of Dimarco’s forfeit, cannot be explained , with Mancini who preferred to recall Emerson Palmieri, a marginal player in a West Ham team struggling to get out of the relegation zone in the Premier League; for Ricci and Fagioli the competition could at least be valid, with the blue midfield appearing to be the only department worthy of our football tradition.

We just have to wait for the next Euro 2024 qualifying round: we shouldn’t see them even in the Nations League Final Four, whose dates overlap with the Under 21 European Championship. In September, Italy will fly to North Macedonia. An opponent who, incredible to say, gives us the creeps.