How the fluid tactics of 'ball-buster' Conte inspired Italy's win over Belgium
It took Italy all of five seconds to validate its fans’ worst fears regarding the lack of quality in their Euro 2016 team. And 90 minutes to persuade them that perhaps it might not really matter.
From the game’s opening kick-off, the Azzurri worked the ball back to Daniele De Rossi, who promptly booted it out for a throw-in. That the Roma midfielder even made it into Italy’s squad for this tournament, after an underwhelming season at club level, had provoked many grumbles back home. Now here he was starting, and failing, in the deep-lying playmaker role once occupied by Andrea Pirlo.
De Rossi, furthermore, was hardly the most contentious name on the team-sheet. Alongside him in midfield was Emanuele Giaccherini, a player deemed surplus to requirements at Sunderland last summer. Up front, Antonio Conte had chosen Graziano Pelle - who started nine of Southampton’s last 18 league games this season - and Eder, who scored once in 15 appearances after joining Inter in January.
How was Italy supposed to overcome Belgium’s Golden Generation with this, its very own Goal-less Generation? Even the most optimistic commentators were struggling for an answer, pulling out old tropes about passion and defensive cynicism.
Related: Pelle's cracker caps Italy win over Belgium in exciting contest
Conte, though, had a different answer. "We will cast an evil eye at everyone," said the Italy manager. "But every team, Belgium too, will give something extra in this kind of tournament. And so, it becomes important to use your head. To propose a kind of football that you have studied and tested."
He would not tell us exactly what he had in mind. To the contrary, Conte had temporary walls erected around Italy’s training pitches in France to keep his plans away from prying eyes. And yet, one or two details still leaked out.
The starting shape would be a 3-5- 2, as it had been in the team’s last few friendlies. But that shape was to be fluid, morphing into a 3-3- 4 when Italy attacked and a 4-4- 2 when his side lost possession. Such fluidity has been a hallmark of Conte’s management, going right back to his time at Bari - where he earned promotion from Serie B with a hybrid 4-4-2/4-2- 4.
It was one thing to hear of his latest plans, though, and quite another to see them in action. Belgium had been expected to take the game to Italy, but instead the first quarter-hour of this match was a story of relentless Italian pressing, Matteo Darmian and Antonio Candreva morphing from full-backs to forwards and back again as the team determinedly set the tempo.
Their energy and enterprise forced Belgium onto the back foot. Worse, it funneled their play inside - especially in the first-half - where the likes of Eden Hazard, Kevin De Bruyne and the desperately disappointing Romelu Lukaku found themselves running straight into the Juventus trio of Leonardo Bonucci, Giorgio Chiellini and Andrea Barzagli.
That alone might not have been enough. Italy’s opening goal, when it arrived, was built on craft more than graft, Bonucci delivering a sumptuous ball over the top of Belgium’s defence for Giaccherini, who brought it down and dispatched it into the far corner with aplomb.
Related - Watch: Giaccherini slots Italy ahead after Bonucci wonder pass
We are not used to seeing such composure from the midfielder - who had not scored for Italy in two-and-a-half years - but anyone who has watched Juventus these last few seasons will certainly be accustomed to seeing Bonucci play passes of a similar caliber. For all the quality lacking elsewhere in Italy’s team, the Azzurri might boast the world’s single best distributor from the centre-back position.
Speaking to me in an interview for The Guardian before this game, Giorgio Chiellini described Bonucci as "our defensive regista." But it was another comment he made to me during the same conversation that popped into my head as Italy held its nerve through a second-half onslaught from Belgium, retreating into a 5-3- 2 before finally hitting on the counter to seal a 2-0 win.
Asked why Italy has been able to produce so many brilliant managers down the years, Chiellini replied: "I think it’s because we’re all a bunch of ball-busters. Others might say that we’re boring, because in Italy tactics is taken sometimes to the point of exasperation. But when you find yourself on the European level, you can’t always expect to have a naturally superior organisation. Sometimes you need to dare to try something more."
There can be few greater "ball-busters" than Conte himself, a man who once ripped Gigi Buffon to pieces - calling him "a defeat from the moment you open your mouth" - for daring to discuss Juventus players' title-winning bonuses before they had crossed the 100-point threshold in 2013-14.
What Conte reminded us on Monday, however, is that he is also much more than that: a fine tactician who is capable of creating dynamic and effective strategies to counter-act specific opponents. This might be, as some have contended, the least talented Italy side in half a century.
But, unlike Belgium, Italy sure looked like more than the sum of its parts in Lyon.