The blue coach presents the delicate qualification challenge to the 2026 World Cup against Estonia: “I found very loaded guys and I saw many positive things”
Humil and arrogant, not beautiful but dirty. It is Italy that Rino Gattuso, who will debut tomorrow evening on the national team bench, announces – or rather: hopes – for the race with Estonia. A first for which “I don’t have time to get excited: too many responsibilities on me. Maybe in the hymn, seeing mom and dad in the stands, thinking about my sister. But it will be the thoughts not to let me sleep – what I did today and what there will be to do in the morning – not emotions”. The first two adjectives, he explains, are not in contradiction: “Humility must be there: you are wrong a ball and then you have to think with a single head to put a piece there. The arrogance is used to try the difficult play and if you are wrong, patience, as long as nothing is given: the mistake is there, but if you do it you don’t have to sit, thinking there is a companion who remedies in your place”. It is the spirit of “his” national world champion and, as far as it has been in its possibilities, of all the teams that has trained: “With the national team you have to think about winning, clean or dirty, but the mentality that serves to do it is only one: not beautiful, but dirty. It is so always, for Italy: a sense of belonging, helping yourself, not giving up a comma. to inculcate to my players and they have to pull it out. “
Italy-Estonia, Gattuso at the conference
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It will not be easy, “because easy matches no longer exist. Estonia has a young coach, with good ideas: it is a team that wants to dribble, he wants to build from below, calls the goalkeeper very often. If not, he knows it well, he knows how to arrive in the last 25-30 meters with ease. We have to make a good pressure and not to give men”. And on how it counts to tactically dealing with it, Gattuso spreads only clues, not certainties: “I want to leave doubts to the colleague: a tip with a under tip, two points, we can do everything. But putting offensive players is not synonymous with goals, it takes tactical balance without thinking about the goleada, quality of play without the craving to play only with cross”. And maybe one more attribute, together with Kean: “I saw it very well, loaded, with great desire and in excellent condition. Like the whole team: on a physical level the tests speak of the best condition of the last 4-5 years in this period, there can be only a little brilliance”.