Luciano Spalletti faces treacherous Euro start in Italy hot seat

Over a thousand matches on touchlines as a senior coach ought to arm a manager for most things, but this weekend, in Skopje, North Macedonia, Luciano Spalletti is wary of the unexpected, of an ambush. It is his debut in charge of Italy’s national team, a treacherous qualifier for the finals of a competition where the Azzurri are, so far, unconvincing defending champions.

North Macedonia, away, is no easy introduction. First, it is a fixture with eerie phantoms from the recent past. Eighteen months ago, with Roberto Mancini at the helm, Italy faced the same opposition in Palermo. The assignment was a comfortable looking one-off playoff semi-final for a place at the World Cup.

But an impotent Italy struggled to break the underdogs down. In stoppage time, North Macedonia scored a breakaway goal, their 1-0 win putting the ticket to Qatar out of reach of Italy. It was the second successive World Cup finals the Italians had failed to reach.

This is the enigmatic institution Spalletti takes over: champions of Europe but World Cup no-shows. A national team that has lost three of its last five matches but with an immense longer history, a strong sense of its identity, a huge pride in its tactical sophistication and ample evidence that few sporting cultures produce such shrewd thinkers about the game than Italian football does.

For that, its coaches are in such global demand. Carlo Ancelotti, record-setting club manager, is wanted by Brazil; Roberto de Zerbi, of Brighton and Hove Albion, is hailed as the great innovator of the English Premier League; Antonio Conte is high on every troubled superclub’s wish-list of firefighters.

To that catalogue of admired Italian coaches, add Mancini, headhunted last month by ambitious Saudi