Italy's World Cup Qualifying Campaign More Promising After Euro 2016 Run

For the Italian national team, the 2016 UEFA European Championship is over.  The players are back in Italy and will soon return to their clubs, some of which have already started preparing for the 2016-17 season.

For dedicated observers of the Azzurri, the next major item of interest will start in September, when new coach Giampiero Ventura leads the men in blue into qualifying for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.

World Cup qualifying is usually a more secure proposition for Italy.  They're usually in Pot 1 when the groups are drawn, giving them an easier road to qualification.

This time it's going to be different, though.  The seeding groups were determined on the FIFA world rankings, and Italy's poor record in friendly competitions, coupled with their group-stage crash in the World Cup in 2014, saw that ranking suffer.

In June 2015, the Azzurri were presented with a rare thing: a friendly match that mattered.  The Italians went into the game knowing that if they won, they would secure a top seeding in the qualifying draw that summer.  Anything less would see them passed by the likes of Croatia, Wales, Slovakia and Austria, dropping them into Pot 2 and, potentially, a difficult qualifying draw.

The worst ended up coming to pass.  A 52nd-minute goal by Eder (no relation to the Brazilian-born Italy international) condemned the Azzurri to their first defeat under Antonio Conte at the worst possible time.

When the draw was made that July in St. Petersburg, Russia, Italy were presented with what looked like a worst-case scenario—they were grouped with Spain.

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As the Azzurri struggled in the buildup to the Euros, it looked less and less like the Italians would be able to count on the automatic qualification that is usually considered a given.  It looked more like they would be fighting for second place and a spot in the playoff.  But now, Italy's prospects for making Russia directly look far brighter.

Things started to appear different at the Euros.  Conte took an injury-depleted roster that was expected to have trouble getting out of the group stage and took it all the way to a sudden-death penalty shootout in the quarterfinals against world champions Germany.  

He did it by instilling a team ethos that saw the entire team play as the ultimate unit, with a tactical system which turned the team into far more than the sum of its parts.  Had they beaten the Germans, they would likely have been favorites for the championship.

Spain, on the other hand, looked like a shell of the side that dominated world football from 2007 to 2012.

They looked too comfortable, locked into the tiki-taka system instilled by Luis Aragones and Vicente del Bosque, who looked out of ideas as Croatia attacked the game and came from a goal down to drop them into second place in the group, condemning them to a round-of-16 tie with Italy.

In that match, Conte's tactics stifled Spain's best players and forced David De Gea into a series of jaw-dropping saves.  Italy's 2-0 win put an official end to the era of Spain.  All of a sudden the team of the last decade was the one on the decline.

The matchup between Spain and Italy will decide the group, so we'll leave it to last for a moment and quickly run down the other four teams in the group.

Italy's first match of the competition will come against Israel.  The Azzurri have played the Israelis three times, all of them competitive fixtures.  They won a both legs of a qualifying tie for the 1962 World Cup and drew with them in the group stage of the World Cup proper eight years later.

They haven't made a major tournament since then, but they came close in qualifying for Euro 2016.  They won their first three games, including a surprising 3-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina, who were tipped by many to qualify out of Group B along with Belgium.

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After that hot start, though, the bottom dropped out.  They only won one more game, against Andorra, and finished four points off the group's playoff spot.  They're plucky but not in Italy's league.

Albania surprised a lot of people by qualifying for the Euros ahead of Denmark in Group I.  They were helped along by an awarded win against Serbia after crowd trouble in Belgrade, as well as a shock win to beat Portugal in the group opener.  Their Italian coach, Gianni De Biasi, has turned them into a well-drilled unit that could steal a point or two from the Italians if they aren't careful—but if the Azzurri are on their game they should win.

As for the minnows of the group, Macedonia has never played Italy, but finished Group C of Euro qualifying tied for last after suffering a stunning and embarrassing stoppage-time loss to Luxembourg.  And Liechtenstein...is Liechtenstein.

But direct qualification will come down to Italy and Spain—and that will be determined by how well they handle their respective transition periods.  Both teams are changing coaches going into the competition—and Spain may be changing eras.

The transition for Italy will be relatively smooth.  Conte's departure to Chelsea has been known for months, and Giampiero Ventura was named as his successor before the Euros began.

The former Torino coach has long been a disciple of a 3-5-2 system similar to Conte's, which will help ease the transition.  

Ventura also has a history with many of the men currently in the Italy setup.  He coached Matteo Darmian, Ciro Immobile and Angelo Ogbonna at Torino and superstar defender Leonardo Bonucci at Bari.  He has a knack for bringing out the best in players.

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All Ventura has to do is get individual game-by-game decisions right, keep the team's intensity up and integrate younger players like Domenico Berardi into the side.  So long as he doesn't deviate too far from Conte's blueprint, he'll have a formidable team—especially once injured midfielders Marco Verratti and Claudio Marchisio return.

Spain, on the other hand, is bordering on a crisis.  Del Bosque is no longer coach, but there was no succession plan, and his replacement is unknown.  

Whoever comes in will likely bring something new to the tactical setup, while players like Sergio Ramos and Gerard Pique will be the wrong side of 30 and Andres Iniesta has insinuated he could retire from international competition after the Italy loss.  La Roja could be looking at wholesale turnover in key personnel, from the man in the manager's office to the roster.

At the most basic level, the Italians have shown the world that—after years of being a whisker away—they can beat Spain.  Given the fact that the 3-5-2 has proved difficult for La Roja to counter in recent years, they could again struggle with the Azzurri. 

The head-to-head matchups will be in October, at the Juventus Stadium in Turin, and in September 2017, in an as-yet-to-be-determined location in Spain.  Whoever gets the upper hand in those matchups will likely win the group—and thanks to recent events, Italy's prospects look much better than they did a month ago.