How Mancini’s quest for joy rebuilt Italy from the wreckage of 2018

Roberto Mancini has achieved the goal he set out at the start of Euro 2020. In an open letter on the eve of the tournament, Italy’s manager promised that his team would throw themselves at this opportunity with the enthusiasm of kids in the playground, offering their country “moments of joy that, just for a second, will let us forget about the year we’ve just gone through”.

That much had been delivered by the end of the curtain-raiser against Turkey. Italy won 3-0, but more than that they attacked with relentless commitment, pouring forward to the end. Ciro Immobile and Lorenzo Insigne celebrated their goals with a sweary homage to cult football movie L’Allenatore nel Pallone.

A nation fell back in love with its football team. That alone was a huge achievement. Many fans had abandoned the Azzurri altogether after they failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.

Mancini took over in the wake of that disaster. TV viewership for his first games in charge was down by more than 11% from the equivalent period under his predecessor, Giampiero Ventura, and more than 22% from when Antonio Conte was in charge. He accepted the moment as an opportunity to take risks, telling his players that “you learn by making mistakes”.

There is a time for learning, though, and a time for showing the world what you know. Before the last-16 game against Austria, Mancini struck a different note. “Tomorrow is the first match where we cannot make mistakes,” he said. “You have to win. You cannot do anything else.”

For all his desire to spread joy, Mancini has always known that, in sport, the greatest pleasure is to win. He did not say it in his letter to fans, but his own eyes were always on the prize. Italy are unbeaten in 33 matches, their longest such run, but when they matched the previous record of 30, set almost a century ago under the manager Vittorio Pozzo, Mancini greeted the achievement with a shrug.

“It’s nice to equal a legend,” he said. “But Pozzo won trophies, which are more important.”

The further Italy have progressed in this tournament, the more candidly he has shared his ambition. Asked before Italy’s semi-final against Spain which aspects of the matchup fascinated him most, Mancini replied: “The thing that intrigues me is the idea of going to the final.” On Friday, he took the next step, telling Uefa’s website: “Reaching the final is a good achievement. But it’s still not enough.”

It is easy to see how Italy’s unbeaten run could even become a burden at a moment such as this. The transformation Mancini has wrought is extraordinary, picking the Azzurri back up after their lowest low in 60 years and setting them on a better course almost immediately. They have won 27 of those 33 games. Italy have outscored their opponents by 86 goals to 10.

Yet Mancini’s own words suggest that such numbers will feel hollow to him if they do not come with a trophy attached. When his Uefa interviewer asked whether he had expected to achieve success this quickly, he replied: “We haven’t reached success yet. It will be a success only if we win on Sunday. We hoped to do some great work, and that much we have achieved. But in the end, what matters is winning.”

This will be Italy’s fourth appearance in a European Championship final, but they have triumphed only once, as tournament hosts, back in 1968. Despite winning a pair of World Cups since, continental success has eluded them.

There was a heartbreaking defeat at Euro 2000, where Italy led France until the fourth minute of second-half injury-time before Sylvain Wiltord equalised and David Trezeguet claimed the golden goal. In 2012, they were thrashed 4-0 by Spain.

A repeat of the latter scenario seems unlikely. That 2012 team were running on fumes after a prodigious effort in the semi-final win over Germany. Giorgio Chiellini was carrying a calf injury that forced him out after 21 minutes and Italy played the last half hour with 10 men having run out of substitutions to replace players whose bodies were betraying them.

They have lost one crucial player to injury at this tournament, Leonardo Spinazzola tearing an achilles tendon in the quarter-final win over Belgium. The left-back was sorely missed against Spain, both for his overlapping runs with Lorenzo Insigne in attack and the recovery speed that helped to mask a lack of pace elsewhere in defence.

Italy’s hope is that Emerson Palmieri, Spinazzola’s replacement, will look more comfortable with a game under his belt, but also that they can dictate the game in ways they were unable to against Spain. The greatest strength of this Italy team lies in the midfield trio of Jorginho, Marco Verratti and Nicolò Barella – the first two operating as dual registas directing the play while Barella seeks opportunities to break the lines.

In the semi-final they were overrun, the decision by Luis Enrique to field Dani Olmo as a false nine allowing Spain to squeeze the midfield from all directions. Throughout the rest of this tournament, however, Italy have dominated possession. It will be their intention to do so again at Wembley.

The stadium means something more to Mancini, for whom it will always be the place where he lost a European Cup final, playing for Sampdoria against Barcelona in 1992. Returning there to win two games already at this tournament alongside his former teammates Luca Vialli and Attilio Lombardo, part of his Italy staff, has felt like a form of catharsis.

Still, they have not yet won a final at Wembley. And Mancini knows the atmosphere will be different on Sunday to that which greeted them on both previous visits, when Italy fans were in the majority.

“England will have almost the whole stadium behind them,” he said on Friday. “Clearly they are going to have great support. But considering that, outside the last few matches of the Euros, we had been coming from a year and a half with no fans, having it like this is good too. I think it’s a beautiful thing to have lots of fans in the stadium.”

He will tell his players to approach the game just like they have every other one: with all the joy that he promised in that letter before the tournament began. “You can’t play a game of football nervous,” Mancini said. “You have to play with the right pressure, really trying to go out and have fun. That’s the only way you win a final.”

And winning is the only thing that counts.