They wanted to return to the pitch at the Stadio Carlo Castellani in Empoli on Thursday, hoping to wear the Italy shirt once more, bring joy to the Azzurre’s fans and resume their Euro 2022 qualifying campaign with the same enthusiasm as before.

Despite the fact that their match against the Israelis has been postponed due to the lockdown measures implemented in Israel, the Azzurre are continuing to work hard at Coverciano. Now, they are focused on their showdown with Bosnia at 16:00 CEST on Tuesday 22 September in Zenica.

“There’s a lot of desire to play, we can’t wait to wear this shirt again,” said Cristiana Girelli yesterday. Girelli, who will be the team’s captain in the absence of the injured Sara Gama, continued: “We’re finally back doing what we love, and we demonstrate this in every single session. We have a lot of quality, and I’m pleased that the new arrivals have understood that there’s an air of calm here. This has been our strength over the past few years.”

This is something which was also emphasised by Elena Linari during today’s press conference. The 26-year old isn’t losing sight of Italy’s primary objective, which is to qualify for Euro 2022: “We’re disappointed that we won’t be able to play on Thursday, but this means that we’ll have more time to study Bosnia. In our first match against them, they defended really well. We’ll need to be more aggressive and try to win, scoring as many goals as possible in the process.” Linari, who joined Bordeaux from Atletico Madrid in the summer, knows what needs to be done for Italy to continue to grow and pick up where they left off in March prior to lockdown: “We want to finish our group on maximum points. In order to achieve this, we need to resume with the same attitude and show everyone that the World Cup was just a point of departure. If we want to reach the level of the strongest teams in the world, we need to try to be more clinical.”

Sitting alongside Linari today was Valentina Giacinti, who has enjoyed a great start to the season with an AC Milan side that has recorded three wins out of three in the league so far. “We hoped that we’d be able to play against Israel in order to get used to playing together again after such a long time away,” said the attacker ahead of this afternoon’s training session scheduled for 17:00 CEST. “However, we’re already focused on our next opponents. We’re preparing ourselves physically and, above all, mentally to ensure that we’re ready to continue to honour this shirt.”