Italy are still missing something – but ‘big-game test’ of Euro 2020 quarter-final could make them complete

Italy know better than any country in football that no success ever comes smoothly.

There are always drop-offs, moments that test your character more than your quality. Virtually all of their greatest tournament victories have been amplified by the greatest crises. Their best teams have had some deeply unconvincing displays, which gave rise to the old truism that Italy always start slowly.

This match against Austria instead became a moment of difficulty because Italy started this tournament so quickly. It was the first time when things didn’t flow as easily, or as impressively.

Any fanciful ideas that they could just rampage their way right through Euro 2020 were dismissed. Certainly, no side has ever done that. Not even Brazil 1970. Not even Spain 2008.

As Roberto Mancini made a point of saying to his players, these are the games where you start to learn what your team is really about.

And that is important even if it’s still the case that Italy haven’t been tested by a top team.

It has been the big question throughout this long unbeaten run – now extended to 31 games – that has made the statistic that little bit less relevant. The feeling has been that it’s still hard to gauge exactly how good Italy are because they haven’t faced a proper challenge.

Austria were much better than most expected. They were still some way off a top team, but that’s part of the value.

Italy were put through the emotional mill. It at least gives their players the experience of a more exacting game, before a more exacting quarter-final opponent.

That is important. That is what allows teams to develop, to grow. They learn how to adapt to challenges, to figure things out mid-game. It is much better that first happens against more forgiving opponents than in the biggest games.

Mancini does have some big decisions to make to further aid Italy’s development, and one of them revolves around his greatest star.

The manager did make a huge call before the game by restoring Marco Verratti at the expense of the magnificent Manuel Locatelli, only to be just as brave in the other direction and switch it back. It means Mancini faces a fairly classic dilemma.

While Europe is realising that Italy have more elite quality than many had talked about in the build-up, it is still true that there is no one with the star profile of Verratti. That brings with it an assertiveness, and clout, but maybe a few other questions.

Is it possible that Verratti’s very aura affects the tactical purity of the team – which is inherently based on hungry young players? Italy didn’t seem as fluid in midfield in this game, with the Paris Saint-Germain midfielder occasionally complicating things – just because he could.

It is now one of the big decisions going into the quarter-final. Does Mancini leave out Italy’s biggest star?

And, further forward, does he bring in one of Italy’s burgeoning stars? Federico Chiesa surely can’t be left out now. He has proven himself too effective, too decisive. His game-breaking goal was one of the moments of the tournament, and true individual inspiration. This team hasn't really been about that, which has been one of their distinctive strengths, but that is often what is required in the knockout stages of the tournament.

The clear spirit of the Italy squad – so visible in the celebrations for the goals and the win – do make Mancini's decisions that bit easier.

It is something so substantial running through the side.

“I think we played as a real team tonight,” Leonardo Spinazzola said, and these were no empty platitudes. That spirit rang out in everything they did.

For all Italy’s togetherness in terms of morale, though, Austria did show there are still gaps in the tactical structure of the team.

There is that lingering sense something is missing that yet prevents them being truly top class – even if that “something” is actually the kind of big-game test that completes them.

They’ll get that in the quarter-final.

Then this team might really know what a tournament is about, in the same way their predecessors do.