Two months after the painful quarter-final elimination against Switzerland in the Euros, Italy could not have hoped for a better start to this new season. For the first time in the history of the Nations League, Italy has won three games in a row, beating the Netherlands (2023 third place play-off), France, and Israel in turn. Italy’s overall results in the UEFA Nations League now climb to 11 wins, 7 draws and 4 losses in 22 matches. 

Italy conceded for the sixth game in a row at the Bozsik Arena in Budapest, before which they kept a clean sheet in four out of five games. The team’s last clean sheet was a friendly in Empoli on 9 June 2024 against Bosnia and Herzegovina (1-0). Italy extended the unbeaten streak against Israel, with five wins and one draw (in 1970) out of six games. Spalletti’s record as the manager: nine wins, four draws and three defeats out of 16 games. The 26 goals for and 15 goals against give his team 31 points out of the maximal 48. The median of 1.93 per game is exactly the same as Gian Piero Ventura’s, putting them both in ninth place amongst managers with at least 10 matches. 

Gianluigi Donnarumma made his 22nd appearance in the tournament for a total of 1980 minutes, extending the record for most Nations League appearances.

After Friday’s goal at the Parc des Princes, Davide Frattesi added another yesterday to continue his scoring run: his 7th goal for Italy, 6th under Spalletti, making him the top scorer under the current manager. Among midfielders in European National Teams, only Bruno Fernandes has netted more goals (9) since September 2023. Frattesi’s 6 goals last year were scored as an Inter Milan player (he was at Sassuolo for the first). This makes him ninth in terms of number of goals scored for Italy by an Inter Milan player, tied with Bergomi. Of Italy’s last ten goals, seven were scored by Inter Milan players (Barella 2, Frattesi 3, Bastoni 1, Dimarco 1). Frattesi is also Spalletti’s most-used player on the roster, playing in 15 out of 16 matches. 

Moise Kean scored his fifth goal for Italy, three years after the last one, against Lithuania in the World Cup qualifiers on 8 September 2021. The forward for Fiorentina is one of the youngsters selected by Spalletti, who is always looking to the future. For the first time in history, Italy started with five players born after 2000: Samuele Ricci, Raoul Bellanova, Sandro Tonali, Moise Kean and Giacomo Raspadori.