Hello and welcome to the TIFO football podcast. I'm Joe Devine and I'm now joined by Alex Stewart.

Hello Joe.

Hello Alex. And Seb Stafford Bloor.

Hello Joe Devine.

Hi, Seb. We just watched the Italy Turkey game, 03-0, whichever way you'd like to talk about it.

And there were lots of themes that we pulled out. We're going to talk about today. Can Italy go all the way being the main one? But before

we get started, there are a few facts that Seb has noted down here in the podcast plan. Mancini,

of course, the head coach of Italy. It's been in charge since May 2018, Bufon, and Deerossi retired after defeat to Sweden in the World Cup playoff, and so did Kealini. But he reversed the decision. The last time that they lost the game, though, this is the interesting one, was in September 2018 to Portugal, Seb. Yeah. An amazing, amazing record. It's also one that's kind of crept up on everybody because

you know what it's like during European qualification. You just, you, it kind of happens in the back,

in the background. You have teams that sort of slowly accumulate points. The opposition isn't

necessarily that high. And over time, a sequence just develops like that. And all of a sudden, you come into a tournament like this. And Italy looked like a team that haven't lost in three years. Yeah. I think the key being they look like a completely different team to the team that played prior to that, because you've listed here in the loss. There were four survivors. Baradi was on the bench for that game, Immobil A, Georgino and donna rima with the other players who played in that

last loss and since then the team has had a complete makeover yeah in personnel but also style joe i

think one of the reasons we we were talking before we were all really looking forward to seeing italy

because they're playing a new style they're playing a sort of more vertical uh ticket Italia is the

way it's referred to in italy and It's an exciting way of playing the game.

But also it's, I suppose if you were,

if you were someone who didn't pay a lot of attention to Italian football,

you'd think it's almost kind of an anti-Italian way of playing,

which is expressive and dynamic and quick and vertical.

And actually a lot of fun.

Like as an opening tournament game goes

where I usually expect it to be a little bit cagey and for the occasion to get on top of players

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