Italy: Why It's Time for Antonio Conte to Consider a Tactical Shift vs. Croatia

Antonio Conte has had a strong start as Italian national team coach. This Sunday he faces what will be his toughest challenge until the European Championships two years from now—and he'll need to do some serious thinking in order to come out successful.

The game against Croatia at the San Siro may go a long way to deciding seeding for the tournament proper.  The World Cup this summer showed the Azzurri just how important that seeding can be. With qualification secured, a win in one of their last two matches would have assured the Italians a place in Pot 1 of the draw. But Cesare Prandelli mailed the games in, drawing both. The seed went to Switzerland instead, and Italy ended up in a group that ended up being their downfall.

A win at home against the group's toughest opposition could be vital to winning the group and getting an advantageous place in the draw. To get one, Conte may have to change how he lines up his team.

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Through his first four games in charge, Conte has stuck to the 3-5-2 that he used to take Juventus to the pinnacle of the Italian game. To do so was practical. It was the system he's been using for two-and-a-half years. The core of the Azzurri was made up of the Juve players he'd called his own a month before. It was the perfect way to make the team function while he evaluated what he had in the player pool and how he may want to tweak things.

The time to tweak may be now.  For one thing, the player base that he had to base the 3-5-2 on, particularly in defense, won't be available to him this month. Leonardo Bonucci is suspended after seeing a red card for a professional foul against Malta last month and Football-Italia reported Thursday that Angelo Ogbonna may miss out with a muscle injury.

That leaves Giorgio Chiellini and Andrea Ranocchia as the only two options at center-back who have a senior cap, with 33-year-old Emiliano Moretti and rising star Daniele Rugani behind them.

Chiellini knows the 3-5-2 intimately, but Ranocchia has been uneven in a three-man back line under numerous coaches—including Conte's Azzurri. Moretti has experience in a three-man line at Giampiero Ventura's Torino, but to throw him out for his first international game in a big qualifier in the San Siro might be asking too much.

Conte could use Matteo Darmian in the position, as he did against Malta last month. Against a minnow like Malta, Darmian could almost be used as another wing-back with Bonucci and Chiellini guarding against any counterattacks, but against Croatia Darmian would be forced into a more defensive role—one that he's unfamiliar with to boot.

Given the losses in the back aren't the only reason that a four-man defensive look is the best way to approach Croatia. Recent history shows the 3-5-2 isn't the way to confront the Vatreni.

Two years ago at Euro 2012, an injury to Andrea Barzagli saw Cesare Prandelli adopt the 3-5-2 as an emergency measure. Daniele De Rossi dropped back into the center of a back three with Chiellini and Bonucci.  The emergency measure was a surprise success in the group opener against Spain, whose full-backs—the providers of width for Vicente Del Bosque—were pinned in their own half by the more advanced wing-backs. The same could not be said in the next game against Croatia.

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Croatia deployed in a 4-4-2 and with two players on either side to deal with the wing-backs were less effective. Croatia's most dangerous attacks originated from the outside. That's especially true of the equalizing goal. While Mario Mandzukic benefited from a major individual error by Giorgio Chiellini, the 3-5-2's weakness against genuine wing play certainly played a part in allowing the service to come in.

The inherent weakness of the 3-5-2, the one wrinkle in the shirt that dogged Conte right up to his departure from Juve was its vulnerability to high-quality wing play. Arjen Robben showed it in the Champions League quarterfinal two years ago, carving up the Bianconeri's left wing-backs. Jose Callejon showed off a similar flair in Napoli's victory over Juventus at the San Paolo this past March. Even that early, that match had relatively little impact on the title race, but the need to defend the wings was such that before Conte resigned in Turin, he was pushing for the players to completely overhaul his system and play in a 4-3-3.

Conte was accused of being stuck in his ways at Juventus as time went on, but that claim isn't entirely fair to him. He stayed with the 3-5-2 for so long in Turin mainly because it got his best players onto the field and put them into positions where they could succeed. If he tried to change with the players he had, they wouldn't have been able to perform at optimal levels. Before he settled on that system, he had made Juve winter champions in 2011-12 playing mainly a 4-3-3 and had planned to install a version of the 4-2-4 before the acquisitions of Andrea Pirlo and Arturo Vidal made him rethink his plans.

As the manager of the national team, Conte has no such problems. He has the pick of the Italian player pool to form his 23-man-roster.  Indeed, the roster he has picked for this game and the subsequent friendly against Albania has the right mix of players to put a potent 4-3-3 onto the field.

Tactics should adjust to the opponent, and the 3-5-2 is a poor fit for the Italians against Croatia. Could Conte use it and win? He could. But to have the best chance at victory, an adjustment should be made.

Tinkering too much can prove detrimental—the World Cup in Brazil taught every Italian that in a very painful way—but making the right adjustments at the right time is the mark of the best in the coaching ranks.  It's time that Conte showed us that he truly belongs with the biggest names of coaching and make the changes necessary to combat Croatia effectively.