Luciano Spalletti spoke to DAZN after the match, expressing mixed feelings about Italy’s performance — pleased with the second-half improvement but disappointed by technical errors and lack of fluidity earlier in the game.
“We were too predictable in the first half,” Spalletti said. “We made mistakes that, in terms of quality, we simply shouldn’t make. Our level must be higher. We have to raise our standards across the board if we want to come to difficult grounds like this one and win. We were chosen to do more, and we must raise our level.”
Turning his attention to Juventus and their title ambitions, Spalletti was pragmatic yet encouraging. “As an ambition, we must have the fight for the Scudetto — not the Scudetto itself. That’s always the path you take,” he explained. “I think I can get more out of the players than what we saw today. The silence of the players shows me that even they aren’t happy with their performance. We need to go out on the pitch and play a different kind of football. If we can’t do that, we are what we show.”
Spalletti also reflected on Kenan Yildiz’s limited involvement during the match. “We didn’t find him enough,” he admitted. “We often recycled possession around the defensive perimeter. When we finally freed him near the edge of the box, we made a poor pass. We need to raise the level. In the first half, he played more centrally; in the second, more on the left. It’s clear we must find him more often, find more space, and play more through the striker to go vertical.”
Finally, he commented on the chants directed toward Dusan Vlahovic, condemning the behaviour from a social and sporting perspective. “The more people go after him, the better he reacts,” Spalletti said. “From a social point of view, we must put an end to this. We shouldn’t use stadiums for things that make no sense in sport. The more we do this, the more we ruin the most beautiful sport in the world. Without football, life would be sad.”
