The defending champions are in the Group of Death, are you optimistic about Italy's trip to the European Championships next year?

In the early morning of the 3rd, the draw ceremony for the 2024 European Championship in Germany ended, and the defending champion Italy fell into Group B as a fourth pot team, meeting fierce rivals Spain, Croatia and Albania, and the "Group of Death" of this competition was also born. Although the overall strength of the "Blue Coats" has declined compared to before and is in the embarrassing stage of lack of personnel, Spain and Croatia, who are in the same group as them, still cannot underestimate such an Italian team, at least their coach Spalletti still has something.

Generally speaking, it is not easy for the defending champions to become the fourth and last pot, after all, their strength is there, but coincidentally, the Italians have become this "unlucky egg", for them who have missed two consecutive World Cups, at this stage, they cannot consider the question of good luck for the time being, and playing the big game first is the king. In this European preliminaries, the performance of the Italians can only be described as average at best, but fortunately, the team finally obtained a place to directly qualify for the main competition, avoiding the embarrassment of missing the competition again.

However, the promotion is a promotion, but the reality of being in the fourth pot team makes them very clear in their hearts that the probability of being in the group of death is quite large, because in addition to the 6 rivals in the first pot, there are also many "hard bones" in the second and third pots. The final draw also confirmed that the Italians were not lucky enough to be in a group that looked like a strong team.

Specifically, Group B consists of Pot 1 Spain, Pot 2 Albania, Pot 3 Croatia and defending champions Italy. Compared to other groups, this group has significantly more "star flavor" and highlights, on the contrary, for Italy, their journey to defend the title is not destined to be easy.

After the draw was announced, Italian Football Federation president Gravina said that the team had to defend the honour of the defending champions, and he was satisfied with the draw result. "I think I can say that I am relatively happy [with the draw result]. We believe we can do well and Spalletti is confident that we can lead us back to the support of the fans and they are looking forward to passing on that determination. ”

When asked by a reporter if he had set a minimum target for Spalletti, Gravina said: "There can't be a minimum target, Italy has to try to break through in a complex group and try to defend their title. The first game is always the toughest and we need to be determined. ”

Coach Luciano Spalletti said Italy would try to play attacking football and make the defending champions remember their names. "In a game, the team defends at different moments, even 10 players on the edge of the box when necessary, but our aim is always to play attractive attacking football," he said. We could have done better, but then we got into fourth gear, but never forget that we are Italy. ”

Specific groupings:

Group A: hosts Germany, Scotland, Hungary, Switzerland

Group B: Spain, Croatia, Italy, Albania

Group C: Slovenia, Denmark, Serbia, England

Group D: Play-off Group A winners (Poland vs. Estonia, Wales vs. Finland), Netherlands, Austria, France

Group E: Belgium, Slovakia, Romania, play-off winners of Group B (Israel vs Iceland, Bosnia and Herzegovina vs Ukraine)

Group F: Turkey, play-off winners of Group C (Georgia vs. Luxembourg, Greece vs. Kazakhstan), Portugal, Czech Republic

Text/Beiqing Sports Zhang Kunlong