Euro 2020: Emerson Palmieri charged with replacing the irreplaceable for Italy

It was a chorus with a difference. As the jubilant Italians celebrated knocking out the world’s top-ranked team, Belgium, the song on the plane back home went: “Ole, ole, ole, Spina, Spina.”

Victory came at a considerable cost. Leonardo Spinazzola’s torn achilles meant he underwent surgery in Finland on Monday. Roberto Mancini declared the left-back “one of the best players in this tournament.” In typical fashion, the new Roma manager thought of himself. “Imagine for me,” said Jose Mourinho, who will be unable to pick Spinazzola for months.

It is safe to say the rest of Italy has greater concerns. Spinazzola was shaping up as the 2021 answer to Fabio Grosso, a left-back who entered a tournament without much of a profile outside his homeland but who became a talismanic figure as the Azzurri tasted glory.

Instead, Italy’s hopes may rest with a player whose last domestic league game came in 2020. Emerson Palmieri is Chelsea’s third-choice left-back. He featured for 89 minutes in the Premier League, none of them under Thomas Tuchel. While he came off the bench to clinch Chelsea’s 2-0 win over Atletico Madrid, even that was as an 89th-minute replacement. Mancini, who gave him starts in the Nations League against Poland and Bosnia in autumn, has appeared more of an admirer than his club managers.

The Italy coach had tried to engineer a move for a bit-part player. “He told me that it might be better for me to join another ambitious club where I could play as much as possible,” Emerson said last month. Mancini’s manoeuvrings were unsuccessful. Emerson was stuck, confined to cameos, plus the FA Cup and World Cup qualifiers in 2021. Until Spinazzola’s injury marred the win over Belgium. Now a spectator may have 180 minutes of Euro 2020 action ahead of him, charged with emulating an idiosyncratic player who has made Italy’s tactics work.

Spinazzola seemed the left-back and left winger all in one. He has been a one-man, right-footed left flank, permitting Mancini’s 4-3-3 formation to become a fluid 3-3-4 or 3-2-5 when attacking and allowing Lorenzo Insigne, nominally the man ahead of him, to cut infield and operate as a quasi No 10. He has been clocked at 33kph, the fastest speed any player in the tournament has reached, and that pace has been necessary to cover as much ground as he has.

Two assists are evidence of his impact in the final third. Given Spain’s difficulties defending the aerial ball, they may be relieved a man who has completed 71 per cent of his crosses is missing. If Emerson shares similar attacking instincts, and was signed by Antonio Conte when Chelsea were playing wing-backs, he lacks the same record of creating goals and it will be difficult to replicate every aspect of Spinazzola’s contribution. Before he pulled up in pain on Friday, he made a brilliant goal-saving intervention to deny Romelu Lukaku an equaliser.

Mancini has been able to swap other players intelligently – Marco Verratti for Manuel Locatelli, Federico Chiesa for Domenico Berardi, Francesco Acerbi when Giorgio Chiellini was injured – but Emerson may find himself charged with replacing the irreplaceable. There has been the sense that the system has been the star for Italy that, without any of the game’s Galacticos, they have prospered by being the best-coached ensemble and finding a way of getting gifted, energetic players to complement each other.

Spinazzola’s valedictory message was to believe in the collective. “Our Italian dream continues and with this amazing group of ours nothing is impossible,” he wrote on Instagram. Nothing felt impossible with him. Without him, does the pendulum swing Spain’s way?