Bertolini prepares the revolution and warns: “Against Iceland we must rediscover humility”

From our correspondent Alessandra Bocci

July 13
– Manchester (United Kingdom)

In the stadium of discord, the small stadium of the Manchester City Academy, Milena Bertolini’s Italy prepares the most difficult match perhaps of her management. Stadium of discord because the designation has angered especially the Icelanders, who play here two out of three European games. But Italy is interested in little or nothing at the moment. “For a final phase of the European Championship I would have chosen perhaps bigger stadiums, but the organizers will have made their evaluations in numerical terms. Perhaps they thought that even smaller stadiums would be enough for a group stage ”, comments the coach And captain Sara Gama cuts short:“ Honestly, now I have other things to think about ”.

humility

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The priority is to rediscover the lost compactness, to play with humility, a word that has often appeared in recent days in post-defeat considerations with France. And Milena Bertolini, who could have in mind a half revolution also in terms of the game system, going from the beloved 4-3-3 to the 4-4-2, explains the mood of her girls. “Worked on awareness, on the idea of ​​remembering the qualities and potential that we have and that have brought us this far. When I talk about humility, I mean that perhaps on a subconscious level we made ourselves a bit enticed by the situation, in the first few minutes it seemed that we entered the French defense like butter. We unconsciously thought we were playing it that way. But we must always keep in mind who we are and where we come from, what happened is human. We knew we would have to play for qualification until the last match, so little has changed in terms of pressure ”.

Ranking

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Tomorrow’s opponent is given at number 17 in the ranking, against Italy’s number 14 position. But Bertolini, who does not give many clues about the alleged revolution in education, does not seem to give particular importance to numbers. “As for the line-up, let’s see how the girls are, being physically and mentally well is essential, but as I always say there are more games in the game and whoever enters later is no less good than whoever plays from the beginning. We will need everyone’s energy. As for the ranking, that of women’s football is particular, because it takes history into account. Italian football has a history, other nations maybe a path started more recently, but they are growing. Iceland in particular has made enormous progress, they have grown a lot with an important project, they are a tough team. We know that to bring home the result we will have to be attentive and concentrated and find the compactness that allowed us to reach the European Championship. There are both pride and anger: anger at how the match against France went, pride in showing our qualities ”. Synthetic Sara Gama: “I would not speak of pride, which can be understood in a positive or negative sense, but of the desire to express oneself. This is a difficult time to manage, but it is not the first time it has happened to us. There were other complicated moments like the match against Denmark in qualifying: even then the pressure was great. Now we must treasure our mistakes with a lot of humility. What have I told my companions in the past few days? There are no specific words, we are intelligent and thick girls and I believe that each of us has done self-criticism. Iceland is a strong national team and to overcome them we need compactness that comes before technical and tactical qualities, and this is the characteristic that has allowed us to go beyond our limits “.