Maturing Nicolò Barella and Italy driven by pain of missing World Cup

Nicolò Barella did not relish being reminded he has scored more international goals than any other player in Italy’s squad at Euro 2024. “That worries me a bit,” he said when the detail was put to him at the end of the 2-1 win against Albania on Saturday. “It means I’m getting old.”

At 27, Barella is hardly in the twilight of his career. There are plenty of older players representing the Azzurri in Germany, and yet only one outfielder, Jorginho, has been capped more times. The Arsenal player made his 55th Italy appearance against Albania. Barella is on 54.

Their midfield partnership is a key pillar of Luciano Spalletti’s team, one of few elements retained from the side that won the last European Championship under Roberto Mancini. If Jorginho, now 32, was at the peak of his powers then, winning the Champions League with Chelsea that same summer and going on to finish third in the Ballon d’Or voting, Barella bears the weight of expectation this time.

In the past three years, he has lifted eight trophies, adding a pair of Serie A titles, two Coppa Italia triumphs and three Supercoppe with Internazionale to Euros success with Italy. Barella has not yet matched Jorginho in winning the Champions League but did play in the final 12 months ago.

During a friendly against Ecuador in March, he wore the Italy captain’s armband for the first time – becoming the second player from Sardinia to do so and marking the occasion with a chipped goal. That was Barella’s ninth strike for the national team. Against Albania he made it a round 10.

It was a superlative finish that completed Italy’s comeback from a disastrous start. Gianluca Scamacca’s deflected shot spun across the box to Federico Dimarco, who jabbed it back toward Barella. He had time and space but also an awkward bobbling ball to work with. Few players would have the audacity to take the shot on first time from the edge of the box and far fewer the technique to hook it into the corner.

Sticking the ball in the net is not even Barella’s stock-in-trade. True, he scored nine times in his most prolific season at Inter, but he remained a crucial component of a title-winning side in this most recent campaign while scoring only two. His game is much more about assists and a unique brand of furious connectivity: relentlessly repositioning himself all over the pitch to be at the service of teammates.

Yet Barella has scored more goals for Italy, in fewer games, than one of the nation’s greatest No 10s, Francesco Totti, managed in an entire career. Barella had not even been expected to start on Saturday after being sidelined for a fortnight by a thigh strain.

“Don’t you go saying he’s indispensable,” Spalletti said after hearing one too many journalists praising the midfielder during post-game interviews. “We can do without anyone. We have 26 strong players – a national team cannot depend on one individual.”

The manager was keen to highlight how his whole team responded to falling behind after 23 seconds – the fastest goal scored in a European Championship. “None of the lads threw their arms up and started blaming a teammate. Everyone said: ‘This doesn’t change anything, let’s start over from the things we know to do.’”

He spoke earlier this year about the importance of the “blocco Inter” (Inter bloc) in his squad: a core group of players whose familiarity and winning mentality could elevate Italy. It was a surprise to see two of them, Dimarco and Alessandro Bastoni, miscommunicating so badly in the mix-up that led to Nedim Bajrami’s goal for Albania, yet it was the latter player who equalised before Barella’s winner.

Just another example of the resilience that carried Inter to 94 points in Serie A this past season? Federico Chiesa offered a different perspective, saying the early setback in a hostile stadium had given him flashbacks to Italy’s triumph in the 2021 final at Wembley. The Juventus winger was another of Italy’s most impressive performers against Albania, named Uefa’s man of the match.

A breakout star at that last European Championship, Chiesa has had a very different experience to Barella since then, sustaining a cruciate ligament tear at the start of 2022 and a series of further physical setbacks since. At 26 he may nevertheless share a certain empathy with the Inter player as two of the foremost talents in an Italian generation that has never experienced playing at a World Cup.

Interviewed by La Gazzetta dello Sport during the quarter-final stage of Qatar 2022, Barella said he had not watched a minute of that tournament, “because I can’t get my head around the emotions that I’m feeling … I can’t stay lucid in the face of such enormous unhappiness.”

The hunger to make amends with another strong showing in this competition was obvious in the way Italy applied themselves after falling behind on Saturday. Spalletti, though, was in no mood to entertain one journalist’s question at full time about whether his team could win the whole thing.

“You’re a bit like everyone else I’ve come across since I started coaching,” he replied, “all saying the same thing: ‘Mister, the important thing is winning’ … No. The important thing is playing well.”

Italy did both against Albania, even if Spalletti did say his players could have gone for the jugular more at 2-1, choosing to pass backwards too often when there were opportunities to go at the defence. The next challenge, on Thursday against a Spain team who opened their tournament with a 3-0 win over Croatia, will be much tougher.

Perhaps, though, that truth cuts both ways. “Stopping Jorginho is not simple,” Albania’s manager, Sylvinho, said on Saturday. “With Barella it’s much harder again.”