Under-21s: first home outing tomorrow against Romania

With the first ever match in EURO 2027 qualifying quickly put behind them, it is now time for the home debut. Tomorrow the Under-21 National Team will host Romania, who are coming off a 0-0 draw with Kosovo. For the young Titani, in the few days between the trip to Finland and their first game on home soil, the key words have been “work” and “analysis”. In short, the best recipe to bounce back strongly. “I am very calm, and so are the boys,” assures head coach Cecchetti. “Obviously, immediately after the match, conceding seven goals left a bitter taste in our mouths: that’s normal, and also fair. But I can assure you that we have started again with real intensity, focusing in particular on analysing the mistakes we made. By Saturday morning the group had already fully processed that match. What’s more, I cannot fault them physically or in terms of commitment: they really gave everything. We know that we can do better in both phases of play. In fact, I have to say we made mistakes that are fairly simple to correct, so I am expecting positive signs as early as tomorrow’s match.”

Lining up opposite them is a Romania side fresh from a hard-fought draw. “Romania struggled against Kosovo, but they are a very good team. After all, that goes for every opponent in this group – ours – which is really of a very high overall standard,” continues the head coach. “Romania have significant physical attributes and play more positionally than Finland, who instead rotated a lot across the various areas of the pitch. That might give us some sort of advantage, but I don’t want to go too far with these considerations. We are still talking about a team of professional athletes with great qualities: they are opponents who must be faced with maximum respect and concentration.”

There are some changes to the squad list, also because the coach has to deal with a couple of injuries that could not realistically be resolved within five days. “I want to wish the very best of luck and a speedy recovery to Zafferani and Valentini, who had to come off early in the game against Finland. While in Valentini’s case we can imagine an injury that will heal in a relatively short time, we are a little more worried about Zafferani’s knee. Now we are waiting for the scan results and keeping our fingers crossed. These are lads who give everything for this shirt and who deserve our utmost respect,” the Biancazzurri coach concludes.

The match will be played tomorrow at San Marino Stadium. Kick-off is at 20:30, live on Titani.tv. Here is the list of players called up for today’s Official Training Session: