Italy head coach Luciano Spalletti took the blame on his shoulders after his team was knocked out of the Euro 2024 after a 2-0 defeat against Switzerland in the round of 16 on Saturday. Spalletti admitted he didn’t have enough time before the tournament to help his team blend with each other.

Remo Frueler scored the opening goal for the Swiss in the 37th minute whereas Ruben Vargas scored right after the half-time break to give a 2-0 lead to his team.

This is the first time when Italy has failed to reach the quarterfinal stage of the Euros in the last two decades.

“I have the responsibility,” Spalletti said at the post-match news conference.

“We failed because of my team selection, it is never down to the players.”

“All other coaches had 30 or even more games with their teams before the tournament started, he said, adding: “I only had 10.”

He added: “There is the possibility of building something, but it takes a little more time. I didn’t have a lot of it. If we look at my predecessors, almost all of them had more games than me.”

Spalletti had taken over the coaching baton after Roberto Mancini had resigned in August 2023.

Italy came up with a timid performance against Switzerland as they even failed to take a solitary shot on goal.

“That goal at the start of the second half cut our legs, we weren’t very incisive,” Spalletti told reporters. “What made the difference is the pace, we had a pace that was too inferior to them in the first half. Even in the individual players there was a different pace.

“Pace and freshness always makes the difference, I changed the players by letting them recover and maybe at the moment here we are not able to do more than this. World Cup? A discussion that will be done later, we need more legs and more pace.