Euro 2025: Italy team guide – midfield depth, a favourable group but a confusing build-up

New York Times

16 hours ago

As the women's game has exploded in Europe over recent years, Italy have perhaps been the biggest disappointment.
They finished bottom of their group at the 2022 European Championship with one point, and also exited at that opening stage of the World Cup 12 months later, losing two of their three matches. Those tournaments featured 5-1 and 5-0 losses to France and Sweden respectively, illustrating how far Italy are behind the continent's top nations.
But this is a good group of players, led by a new manager, and the draw looks to have worked out reasonably well for their hopes. Italy should not find themselves embarrassed in Switzerland this summer.
Andrea Soncin, 46, was a journeyman striker who spent the majority of his career in Italy's lower divisions, although he did play 23 games in Serie A for Atalanta and Ascoli in 2006-07, scoring seven goals.
After retiring in 2017, he spent five years in various coaching roles at Venezia — the club where he spent some of his youth-team days — including managing the under-17 and under-19 sides, and also two spells in interim charge of the first team. Appointed to replace Milena Bertolini after the ill-fated World Cup 2023 campaign, this is his first job in women's football.
Italians bristle at the idea that their current national teams play the game in a traditionally Italian way, and you would not consider Soncin's incarnation overwhelmingly defensive. In particular, they have tremendous quality in midfield. But this is nevertheless a team based around organisation and tactics rather than flair.
Advertisement
They usually play 4-3-3, but can switch to a back three. Either way, they defend well, retain the ball in midfield and possess penalty box threat. What feels lacking is explosiveness and creativity in attacking midfield zones, at a time when other European nations are producing lots of players in that mould.
Their star is Manuela Giugliano of Roma. A wonderful technician capable of playing either as an Andrea Pirlo-style 'regista' or as a more advanced No 10, the 27-year-old is one of the most creative players in this tournament — in the 4-1 Nations League away win against Wales at the start of this month, Giugliano's set-piece deliveries led to three of the goals — but has not yet achieved the international success to match her excellent domestic displays.
She is part of a solid spine which includes her Roma team-mate Elena Linari, a classic, solid Italian centre-back who dominates her own box, and captain Cristiana Girelli of Juventus, who, at age 35, is still their most reliable centre-forward.
The midfield quality is very impressive.
As well as Giugliano, Italy can also count on Fiorentina's Emma Severini, a free-running player who offers technical quality and has the knack of arriving in the box at the right time. Arianna Caruso offers vision and guile on the ball, and is the only player in this squad who played abroad in 2024-25, although she was only on loan at Bayern Munich from Juventus and started only two league games during her three months there.
Italy are also tactically flexible, with various players — particularly the full-backs — capable of operating at multiple positions.
Italy generally try to build up methodically, but their passing out from the back is not always fluent and high pressing may cause them problems. The quicker they can get the ball to the midfielders, the better.
They also concede some preventable goals; first-choice Laura Giuliani has 93 caps but is not a particularly convincing shot-stopper.
Teenager Giulia Dragoni, a potentially world-class midfielder who spent the season on loan at Roma from Barcelona, suffered a ligament injury in her right ankle in the closing weeks of the campaign and is ruled out, robbing Italy of some midfield creativity. As mentioned, however, they do have depth in that area.
Italy topped their qualification group, ahead of Euro 2017 winners Netherlands, two-time champions Norway and Finland, although they only actually won two of the six matches, drawing three.
In all, they have been slightly difficult to suss out: their Nations League campaign included a 3-1 home defeat by Denmark in February but then a 3-0 win in the reverse fixture six weeks later. They managed to frustrate Sweden, semi-finalists in England three years ago, only losing to a stoppage-time penalty in Stockholm, then drawing 0-0 back in Parma.
So there are positive signs, but Italy are frustratingly inconsistent.
The order of matches may have worked out nicely for Italy: they don't play Spain until the final group game, when the world champions will surely already be through to the knockout phase, and might rotate their side.
Finishing ahead of Belgium and Portugal should be considered their target, and if Italy do manage to go through in second place, they are likely to face a relatively gentle quarter-final against a side from Group A — considered the tournament's weakest pool (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Finland).
So, while Italy are definitely not one of the best four sides in the tournament, a semi-finals place is achievable.
In the first seven Women's European Championships, between 1984 and 1997, Italy twice reached the final and were in the semis on four other occasions. But they have failed to progress past the quarter-finals since then.