Italy
Record-chasing Italy becoming the team to fear at Euro 2020
Italy’s unbeaten streak won’t last forever, and Austria coach Franco Foda is plotting to be the one to stop it.
The Italians have become one of the favorites at the European Championship after winning all three of their games in the group stage, scoring seven goals and conceding none. Those three victories at Euro 2020 extended the team’s unbeaten streak under coach Roberto Mancini to 30 games — matching the previous record set in the 1930s.
Read: UEFA Euro 2020: All you need to know
“Initially it seemed to be an insurmountable and impossible challenge for us, because they haven’t lost for an eternity,” Foda said. “But sooner or later even Mancini’s team will lose.”
Austria, which has reached the round of 16 at the tournament for the first time, will get its chance on Saturday at Wembley Stadium.
“The team achieved something spectacular. We are in the round of 16 and now we want to put everything to take the next step to make it into the quarterfinals,” Foda said Friday. “We have lots of confidence ... we’re focused and prepared very well for this upcoming match against Italy.”
Besides the unbeaten streak, Italy will also be trying to set another record. The team has not conceded a goal in 11 matches, a total of 1,055 minutes. If Austria fails to score, Italy will surpass the record of 1,143 minutes set between 1972 and 1974.
For a team that failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, Italy’s recent results are quite remarkable.
Read: Italy opens Euro 2020 with 3-0 win over Turkey
“It’s something that makes us proud, especially considering what they thought of us before the tournament started,” Italy forward Lorenzo Insigne said. “But we have to stay focused, calm and think about ourselves. We haven’t done anything yet. Our objective is to go all the way, it wasn’t just to get through the group stage.”
The 30-year-old Insigne embodies Italy’s transformation under Mancini.
The previous coach, Gian Piero Ventura, lost the squad’s support during a World Cup playoff loss to Sweden when he left Insigne — considered the team’s most talented player — on the bench.
Insigne has formed a strong partnership with Ciro Immobile, who has finally been able to translate his scoring success in Serie A to the international stage.
“It’s the first time that I’ve played in such an important event at this level, in such an important role,” Insigne said. “In the past other coaches have used formations that were less compatible with my style of play, although I have always made myself available.
“Now Mancini is using a system of play that is more suited to me and to other players’ characteristics.”
Insigne already has experience scoring at Wembley, in a 1-1 draw against England in a friendly in 2018.
“It was only a friendly but it was incredible,” Insigne said. “I think it’s everyone’s dream to score in such a stadium. We will try to go to London and give a great performance, as we have always done until now.
“Our strength is that we don’t change our nature ever. Austria runs a lot and creates pressure, we’ll study our opponents but we will prepare for the match thinking about what we have to do.”
Italy has drawn praise for its free-flowing, attacking style of play. But veteran defender Leonardo Bonucci said the team is prepared to forget “the beautiful game” in order to get a result.
“I’ve always said that there are situations in matches where you need to be bad and ugly,” Bonucci said Friday. “And we’ve done that in matches when we needed to defend the result, when we’ve sat deep, when we’ve battled in front of our box.
“There are a whole host of moments in a knockout match and you need to be able to read those correctly just like in tomorrow night’s game.”
Italy is playing with such spirit that the buzzword among the Azzurri players is “fairytale.”
No one embodies that more than Giacomo Raspadori, a 21-year-old Sassuolo forward who hadn’t even played a game for Italy when he was named in the 26-man squad for the tournament.
Raspadori was brought on as a substitute in Italy’s final group match against Wales, making only his second appearance for his country.
“This is all a fairytale, for the team and for me,” Raspadori said. “In four months so many things have changed.
“Those who are now my Italy teammates were who I saw as sporting idols a short while ago.”
The winner of Saturday’s match will head to Munich to face either defending champion Portugal or Belgium in the quarterfinals on July 2.
UNESCO watching as Venice grapples with over-tourism
Away from the once-maddening crowds of St. Mark’s Square, tiny Certosa island could be a template for building a sustainable future in Venice as it tries to relaunch its tourism industry without boomeranging back to pre-pandemic day-tripping hordes.
Private investment has converted the forgotten public island just a 15-minute waterbus ride from St. Mark’s Square into a multi-faceted urban park where Venetians and Venice conoscenti can mix, free from the tensions inherent to the lagoon city’s perennial plague of mass tourism.
“This is the B-side of the Venetian LP,” said Alberto Sonino, who heads the development project that includes a hotel, marina, restaurant and woodland. “Everyone knows the first song of the A-side of our long-play, almost nobody, not even the most expert or locals, know the lagoon as an interesting natural and cultural environment.”
It may be now or never for Venice, whose fragile city and lagoon environment alike are protected as a UNESCO world heritage site. Citing overtourism, UNESCO took the rare step this week of recommending Venice be placed on its list of World Heritage in Danger sites. A decision is expected next month.
After a 15-month pause in mass international travel, Venetians are contemplating how to welcome visitors back to its picture-postcard canals and Byzantine backdrops without suffering the past indignities of crowds clogging narrow alleyways, day-trippers picnicking on stoops and selfie-takers crowding the Rialto Bridge.
The recommendation by UNESCO’s World Heritage Center took into account mass tourism, in particular the passage of cruise ships through the historic center, a steady decline in permanent residents as well as governance and management problems.
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“This is not something we propose lightly,” Mechtild Roessler, director of the World Heritage Center, told AP. “It is to alert the international community to do more to address these matters together.”
Veneto regional officials have submitted a plan for relaunching the tourism-dependent city to Rome that calls for controlling arrivals of day-trippers, boosting permanent residents, encouraging startups, limiting the stock of private apartment rentals and gaining control over commercial zoning to protect Venetian artisans.
The proposal, submitted in March, aims to make Venice a “world sustainability capital,” and hopes to tap some of the 222 million euros ($265 million) in EU recovery funds to help hard-hit Italy relaunch from the pandemic.
“Venice is in danger of disappearing. If we don’t stop and reverse this, Venice in 10 years will be a desert, where you turn the lights on in the morning, and turn them off in the evening,” said Nicola Pianon, a Venice native and managing director of the Boston Consulting Group whose strategic plan for Venice informed the region’s proposal.
The proposal responds to Venetians’ urgency to reclaim their city from the mass tourism that peaked at some 25 million individual visitors in 2019, and stanch the exodus of 1,000 Venetians each year. It envisions investments of up to 4 billion euros to attract 12,000 new residents and create 20,000 new jobs.
As much as Venetians groan at the huge tourist flows, the pandemic also revealed the extent to which the relationship is symbiotic.
Along with lost tourist revenue, Venetians suffered a drastic reduction in public transport, heavily subsidized by tourist traffic. Even city museums could not afford to reopen to residents when lockdowns eased.
“Venice without tourists became a city that could not serve its own citizens,” said Anna Moretti, an expert in destination management at Venice’s Ca’ Foscari University.
The pandemic paused the city’s plans to introduce a day-tripper tax last year on visitors who sleep elsewhere — 80% of the total tourist footfall.
Some 19 million day-trippers visited in 2019 , spending just 5 euros ($6) to 20 euros each, according to Boston Consulting. On the other side of that equation, the 20% of tourists who spend at least one night in Venice contribute more than two-thirds of all tourist revenue.
A reservation system with an access fee is expected to launch sometime in 2022 to manage day visitors.
With an eye on monitoring daily tourist arrivals, the city set up a state-of-the-art Smart Control Room near the main railroad bridge last year that identifies how many visitors are in Venice at any moment using cell-phone data that also reveals their country of origin and location in the city.
The technology means that future reservations can be monitored with QR codes downloaded on phones, without the need to set up check points. Pianon said the plan is feasible in a city like Venice, which has a limited number of access points and is just 5 square kilometers (2 square miles) in area.
Relaunching more sustainable tourism in Venice would require diverting tourists to new destinations, encouraging more over-night stays, discouraging day trips and enabling the repopulation of the city with new residents.
Much could go wrong. Tourist operators are desperate for business to return, and there is a pent-up global desire to travel. In addition, many changes being sought by regional and city officials must be decided in Rome, including any limits on commercial zoning or Airbnb rental properties.
“I think the level of dystopia that we had reached was of such a scale that there has to be a reaction,” said Carlo Bagnoli, head of an innovation lab, VeniSia, at Ca Foscari University. “There are many projects emerging from many places.”
Certosa island, after more than a decade, is still a work in progress, but its success is in the numbers: 3,000 visitors each weekend.
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Sonino sees another 10 public sites in the lagoon with redevelopment potential, including former hospitals, abandoned islands and military bases.
He blames Venetians themselves for the city’s predicament, being long on talk, short on action. But he feels the pandemic -- coupled with the world’s abiding interest in Venice’s future -- might just be the push the city needs to change.
“I prefer to hope that we catch the opportunity. Carpe diem is not only a slogan but an opportunity,” Sonino said. “We need a lot of ideas and a lot of passion to take Venice from the past to the future.”
Euro 2020 kicks off started at Stadio Olimpico
Postponed by a year, the biggest sporting event since the coronavirus brought the world to a halt kicked off Friday at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome — a milestone both for European and world sports.
Italy and Turkey are playing their Group A match at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.
Read: UEFA Euro 2020: All you need to know
There are about 16,000 fans in the stadium. Attendances for most matches at the 24-team tournament in 11 cities around the continent have been cut because of restrictions related to the pandemic.
Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli delivered a powerful performance of Giacomo Puccini’s aria “Nessun Dorma” at the opening ceremony for the European Championship.
Bocelli sang as the fireworks went off in the background and a female dancer attached to large helium balloons floated above the field.
Read: UEFA EURO 2020: The favourites, underdogs and outsiders
The performance was followed by a virtual performance by U2 stars Bono and The Edge with DJ Martin Garrix.
The tournament represents a major step forward on the path toward recovery after one of the darkest chapters in the continent’s history since World War II. More than 1 million Europeans have died in the pandemic, including almost 127,000 Italians.
“After everything that’s happened, now the situation is improving, I think the time has come to start providing fans with something to be satisfied about,” said Italy oach Roberto Mancini, who tested positive for COVID-19 in November but was asymptomatic.
Many worry that it’s still not safe to bring tens of thousands of fans together in stadiums across Europe, but organizers hope measures including crowd limitations, staggered arrival times for fans, social distancing rules and lots of hand sanitizer will help prevent a resurgence of virus infections, which have dropped sharply in Europe in recent months.
The virus already has had an impact on the tournament, which for the first time is not being hosted by one or two nations but is spread out across the continent with matches in 11 cities.
Spain captain Sergio Busquets tested positive for COVID-19 and will miss the team’s first match against Sweden in Seville on Monday. Another Spain player tested positive, as did two of Sweden’s players. The Spanish squad was getting vaccinated Friday.
Russia winger Andrey Mostovoy then became the first player to be cut from a national team on Friday after testing positive.
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