Italy manager Luciano Spalletti lashed out at his players after they needed a 98th-minute equaliser to rescue a 1-1 draw against Croatia on Monday night.
The defending champions looked to be heading for a third-placed finish in Group B, leaving them facing an anxious wait to learn their fate, but Mattia Zaccagni curled home a last-gasp effort to cancel out Luka Modric’s opener.
That sealed Italy’s place in the knockout stages, but Spalletti was far from happy with his side’s display. The 65-year-old switched to a 3-5-2 formation for the game in Leipzig after previously playing a 4-3-3 in the group, but insisted his team played so poorly that it didn’t matter which system he used.
‘We were absolutely not prudent,’ Spalletti said after being questioned by Sky Italia pundits. ‘If the limitation is that we struggle to play out from the back with simple balls, then we will struggle with any line-up or any tactical system that we use.’
‘In the first half, we lost the ball in ways we absolutely cannot afford to do. That’s not prudence. If we don’t play with quality, if we do the basics and nothing more, then we will struggle.
Luciano Spalletti felt his Italy side were ‘too timid’ in the first half against Croatia
Italy had a frustrating evening and needed a late goal to secure second place in Group B
‘It was not about the system, we were too timid in the first half, but the system was irrelevant compared to the attitude and quality seen on the field.’
Italy will take on Switzerland in the last 16 after an unconvincing group stage that saw them collect four points from their three matches.
Spalletti claimed his side only showed ‘flashes’ of their quality in Monday’s match, and will need to do much better if they are to defend their title.
‘There’s no denying it, we were below our usual level in the first half,’ he said.
‘If we don’t create very much, we’re not going to score very much. You can see we were thinking about bringing a result home, without really believing that we needed a win. It was involuntary, but I expect more from my players, because they show it in flashes.
‘They do have the quality, but at times we make really banal errors. We have better capabilities than what we saw today.
‘Jorginho played well today, so did [Nicolo] Barella, [Riccardo] Calafiori is a top player who knows how to do everything. We have ways of playing out from the back, but we’ve got to do better.’
