No Marchisio, no Verratti and a serious dearth of central strikers. Italy's 30 man provisional squad has been named and there's every reason to be hopeful form an Irish point of view.
After Euro 2012, we're never likely to go into a major tournament feeling unduly cocky but that's not to say we need to give undue credence to the teams we come up against this summer. We didn't want to see Italy come out of pot 2 during the draw but they did and it's time to look to the positives.
One of which is the fact that there's an almost ludicrous lack of goals in the squad that Antonio Conte has named today.
Here is #Conte's 30-man squad for the #Azzurri's second pre #EURO2016 training camp. #VivoAzzurro #Italy pic.twitter.com/jIaWaG8ao0
— Italy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@Azzurri_En) May 23, 2016
We don't fancy Lorenzo Insigne running against the Ireland back four but aside from the Napoli wide man, there's not a whole lot there to be overly worried about (he says waiting for this to come back and bite us on the arse next month).
We're not going to fly into the game against the Italians expecting a clean sheet and three handy points but there's no point denying that, on paper at least, this is the weakest squad that Italy have brought to a tournament for quite some time.
As an example, you only need to look at the international goals that have been scored among the forwards named.
Out of that squad, the top goalscorer is Danielle De Rossi on 17 and after the Roma midfielder you have to go all the way down to Giorgio Chiellini's six goals for the Azzurri to find the second top goalscorer. There's been a lot of change at the top end of the pitch for the Italians but to think that they're heading into a major tournament with a central midfielder and a centre back as their two top goal-scorers, it's certainly an interesting situation. Graziano Pelle, otherwise known as Shane Long's boot cleaner, is the top goalscoring forward with four. (via Daniel Storey)
Top international scorers in Italy's 30-man preliminary squad:
De Rossi - 17
Chiellini - 6
Pelle - 4
52 int. goals between 30 players.— Daniel Storey (@danielstorey85) May 23, 2016
As we said, we're not going to be overly cocky this summer by any stretch of the imagination but, at the same time, there's not exactly a massive amount to fear about that Italian squad.
