Luciano Spalletti believes his Italy side lacked quality following their disappointing 1-1 draw against North Macedonia. The Azzurri took the lead through Ciro Immobile, only to be pegged back by a Enis Bardhi free kick in the second half. Speaking of his first game in charge, Spalletti explained where he thought the team went wrong but also pointed to the dreadful playing conditions that hampered the game:
“The suffering was on the level of play, on rebounds and second balls. We weren’t good at countering. The team played a good game, we didn’t concede much. There was the possibility of space and passes to be able to hurt the opposition.”
“What do we have to work on? The aspects that come out of this match here. Because then this is the only element we have to go and look for improvements.”
“My debut? I always sleep little, but it doesn’t depend on the debut. There was a bit of emotion. An Italy game is played all over the world, all of Italy was watching us and so we are evaluated for what we do on the pitch.”
“We take away the performance we gave . We tried to play the game the way we were organised. Perhaps we could have done something more in terms of quality in the middle of the pitch. However, this also depended on the pitch, which affected the quality. We were not good at finding the passing lines. It is a game from which we can start working”.
“We have to restart from tonight, from the concepts that we missed. The videos will be useful, we’ll go and review what happened. It counts as a training session. Then we’ll have to change a few elements because this camp has left its mark.”
“At a certain point we had too many cautioned players, I had to remove one cautioned player. I tried to give replacements on the outside and I inserted a second forward like Raspadori”.
