Italy coach Antonio Conte said hard work allowed a talent-shorn Azzurri to become more than the sum of their parts to dump Spain out of Euro 2016.
Goals from Giorgio Chiellini and Graziano Pelle handed Conte’s men a throroughly deserved 2-0 win in the last 16 over the two-time defending champions to avenge their 4-0 thrashing in the Euro 2012 final.
“Right from the outset, since I took over, I have said that the only route forward to achieve a semblance of success is to try and be a like a club team,” said Conte, who is to take over as Chelsea coach after the tournament. “We cannot simply be a group of players. There is no point in hiding it, this is not the rosiest period for Italy in terms of talent.”
“Given the fact we cannot fall back on a selection of good players, we have to be a collective. I have battled for two years for people to understand this and we are a team. We have been working very intensively for a month now, tactically and physically, in a bid to surprise people and we have already succeeded on that,” he added.
The road to the final does not get any easier for Conte’s men as they next face world champions Germany in the quarter-finals on Saturday.
Italy have never been beaten by Germany in eight meetings at major tournaments.
However, Germany stormed to a 4-1 win when the sides last met in a friendly in March.
Conte said Germany coach Joachim Loew’s side are even a “cut above” Spain.
“We are coming into this after a 4-1 defeat in Germany in March, lest people forget. We are playing against the best side in the Euros bar none. This was a great feat today and we will need a titanic effort on Saturday,” Conte said.
“[Thiago] Motta is suspended and that will penalize us, because Daniele de Rossi has hurt his hip. We have already lost [Antoni] Candreva to injury. There are a lot of hurdles in our way, but we know when the going gets tough, we respond well,” Conte said.
“I think Germany are a cut above the rest,” he added.
Despite the joy of mastering Italy’s first major finals win over Spain since 1994, Conte insisted he did not regret deciding to accept the Chelsea job before the tournament got underway.
However, he left the door open to a return to the international scene once his time in the English Premier League comes to an end.
“I have made a choice. I will have a significant experience abroad now, but clearly, Italy has a place in my heart from every perspective and I hope to be Italy coach again in the future, because there is no experience like that in the world,” he said.
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