Football Italia
·15 June 2024
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·15 June 2024
Italy are the defending European champions, but 15 Azzurri have never played at the Euros, including Federico Dimarco and Riccardo Calafiori who are expected to start against Albania.
Italy make their EURO 2024 debut as the defending champions at the Westfalenstadion this evening.
Only 11 Azzurri have already played in the competition. Among them are Jorginho, Gigio Donnarumma, and Federico Chiesa, who were part of the squad coached by Roberto Mancini, who won the tournament three years ago.
Stephan El Shaarawy played for eight minutes against Ireland at EURO 2016, while Matteo Darmian made four appearances in that year’s tournament, one as a starter.
Giacomo Raspadori and Alex Meret also won EURO 2020 even if the Napoli striker played only 15 minutes against Wales, while his teammate didn’t play at all.
Alessandro Bastoni, Nicolò Barella, Bryan Cristante, and Giovanni Di Lorenzo were also on that team. Lorenzo Pellegrini had been called up but was forced to pull out due to an injury days before the start of the tournament.
The Roma star is among the EURO debutants in the Italy squad, joining the remaining 14 players chosen by Spalletti: Dimarco, Calafiori, Alessandro Buongiorno, Federico Gatti, Davide Frattesi, Gianluca Scamacca, Guglielmo Vicario, Raoul Bellanova, Gianluca Mancini, Mateo Retegui, Mattia Zaccagni, Nicolo Fagioli, Andrea Cambiaso and Michael Folorunsho.