The impressive performance against Albania by Riccardo Calafiori (Rome, 21 years old) and his Apollonian beauty have awakened nostalgia in football Italy. Comparisons with Il bello Antonio Cabrini, due to his sudden and shocking emergence into the national team, has awakened the memory of Enzo Bearzot and his unexpected commitment to Cabrini and Paolo Rossi in the 78 World Cup in Argentina. With the two of them, Bearzot was part of the base of the team that was crowned four years later in Spain 82.
Before making his debut in the Euro Cup and showing an unusual hierarchy for a debutant, Calafiori had only played the two warm-up friendlies prior to the tournament. He played five minutes against Turkey and the entire game against Bosnia, in which Luciano Spalletti already saw clearly that he would be Interista Bastoni’s partner in the center of defense.
For Spalletti, Calafiori is one of the hallmarks of his new Italy. The alignment of the sought-after Bologna center back with Bastoni responds to the preponderance that the Tuscan coach gives to the ball coming out from behind to break the rival’s pressure. Both are left-footed, but Spalletti, like Luis Enrique with Laporte and Iñigo Martínez, does not see any problem with it. He is interested in his defenses defending rigorously, but also in having a good footing.
The comparison of Calafiori with Cabrini also emerges from the elegance and versatility that the legendary Juventus defender also had. Calafiori started as an offensive left back and is now a center back who joins the midfield line to set up the game. In the match against Albania, at times, he was the Italian player who monopolized the ball the most when it ran through the interior areas on the left.
“Two days before the game, Spalletti asked me if I was prepared to perform that way. I told him yes, he has been talking for a long time about how we have to play like this,” Calafiori said in the mixed zone after the duel with the Albanians. “He was never afraid, it seemed like he had played 70 games with the national team,” Alessandro del Piero analyzes him with admiration on Sky Italia. Next to him, Fabio Capello also showed that he was captivated by Calafiori. “I didn’t think that someone who made his debut in a major competition could show so much personality. “He reminds me of Sergio Ramos,” said the veteran coach. Only another legend like Paolo Maldini, another with whom Calafiori is compared due to his physique, and the ribbons that cinched his hair, debuted in a Euro Cup with Italy when he was younger.
The doubt that overwhelms Italy is whether against Spain it will want to be as dominant as against Albania and if, if it wants to, it will be able to develop it. “Sometimes we attack and other times we are forced to defend in our half of the field, but the idea is always to try to play football,” Spalletti said yesterday. He has told his players that if they want to go far in this Euro Cup they have to maintain that idea of developing the game from behind. He even went further by emphasizing that precisely against the big teams they should bet even more on the ball. “Starting with our goalkeeper, I am curious to see what will happen when they try to pressure us, what we will decide to do and how we will respond,” added the Italian coach.
Trained in Roma, as a youth he suffered a serious knee injury. Advised by Mino Raiola, he traveled to Pittsburg (United States) to be treated by surgeon Fredi Fu, the same one who performed the miracle of reconstructing Ibrahimovic’s knee so that he could play again at the age of 36. In his case, the prestigious American doctor, now deceased, had to rebuild the meniscus and ligaments. When he returned and was integrated into Roma’s first team, he did not convince José Mourinho, who first approved a loan to Genoa and then the sale of him to Swiss side Basel. Tonight, Il Bello Calafiori will have a litmus test against Morata and the pressure exerted by Luis de la Fuente’s team.
You can follow The USA Print in Facebook and xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
_
