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Luciano Spalletti still hadn’t found the Iserlohn mole.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” he apologised. “I hope you can give me a helping hand but I don’t know how to answer that question.” Searches in the Sauerland countryside where Italy were based for the Euros turned up nothing. Holes in the inner sanctum of Casa Azzurri, as the national team’s training centre is known, concerned him whether they were real or not. “There’s a Julian Assange in the dressing room. A striker would have been more useful, but there you go,” Corriere della Sera columnist Massimo Gramellini wryly observed.
After the 1-1 group stage draw against Croatia in Leipzig, Spalletti walked into the press conference with little of the euphoria one might expect after Mattia Zaccagni’s 98th-minute equaliser ensured Italy got out of the group of death. The afterglow instead lit his short fuse. He’d already clashed with Sky Italia
analyst Paolo Condo over the perception his team were too cautious. “What do you mean caution?”