Italy coach Luciano Spalletti said the main issue with his team was the lack of intensity during games after the defending champions were knocked out of Euro 2024 with a 2-0 defeat to Switzerland in the last 16.
"Recently we have tried to train players to have that intensity, the very quick recovery. In terms of that I wasn't overly happy with our responses on the training ground," he said after Saturday's game.
"When we were forced to play at high tempo, we were not able to combine that with our players' attributes. If we failed, we failed.
"We were not brave, we didn't maintain a high level of intensity. What happened tonight didn't come down to one single call. But if you don't do something in terms of tempo, it becomes harder to compete. And we were under par in terms of intensity," Spalletti said.
He also pointed out the fact that he had only a few games to get to know his team after he took over the national side in September 2023, following the surprise departure of Euro 2020 champion Roberto Mancini.
"All other coaches had 20, even 30 matches in charge, I only had 10 and was already under fire. I probably need to get to know my team a bit better to be able to set things up better. We also had players who sustained injury, players I was counting on," he said.
Italy lost defenders Giorgio Scalvini and Francesco Acerbi to injury a few weeks before the tournament and Riccardo Calafiori was suspended for the Swiss game.
Spalletti added that Italy's future will come down to making different choices in the future and the team needs players with "more physicality."
"We saw that in one-on-one situations we struggled and that makes the difference in terms of winning the ball back. I will make mistakes but we have experimented a little bit. It's not as scandalous result as you're trying to make it sound," he said to angry Italian reporters.
