Italy's dearth of centre-forwards a striking problem for manager Roberto Mancini

A former manager of Italy, Antonio Conte, was complaining long and loud about the players at his disposal last weekend.

Those gripes have set Conte on a fast-track to departure from Tottenham Hotspur, whose first-teamers he offended, and, quite likely, on a path home to Italy for his next club job.

There, he might find in the quality of native goalscorers something to criticise, too. The coach who now occupies Conte’s former role in charge of the national squad, Roberto Mancini, would have been forgiven for smiling on hearing him bemoan his playing staff at Spurs.

What would Mancini give for a centre-forward like Tottenham’s Harry Kane, who will be leading England’s forward line against Italy on Thursday evening? It’s the standout fixture as the qualifying process for next summer’s European Championship begins, a re-run of the final of the last Euros, which Italy won, on penalties at Wembley.

Both nations have been through ups and downs since. Kane has become his country’s joint all-time record goalscorer but also suffered the heartbreak of missing a penalty in a World Cup quarter-final against France that, had he converted, might have preserved his and his country’s dream of taking their incremental successes of the last five years – a World Cup semi in 2018; a Euros silver medal three summers later – a step higher.

Italy, meanwhile, contrived to follow up Mancini’s stellar achievement in triumphing at those Euros with a humiliation. They failed to reach the World Cup in Qatar at all, eliminated in the semi-final of the play-offs thanks to a 1-0 home loss to North Macedonia. A late goal on the counter-attack shocked the Italians, who had dominated possession but lacked precision or ruthlessness in their finishing.

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