Riccardo Calafiori, an Italian centre-back in name, hair and pedigree

By
James BAOUCH
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In the bunkered press room at the Allianz Stadium in Turin, Jose Mourinho tried to explain Roma’s defeat to Juventus.

Roma’s squad, he claimed, was not deep enough to compete. “The three defenders I had on the bench were (Bryan) Reynolds, (Marash) Kumbulla and (Riccardo) Calafiori,” he said. Mourinho then paused for effect. He bobbled his head, raised his eyebrows and made a clicking sound to let it sink in.

In hindsight, he was proven more right than wrong.

Reynolds, the now 22-year-old, seven-cap USMNT full-back, was sold to Westerlo in Belgium last summer. Kumbulla never looked like the €30million (£25.3m, $32.2m) player Roma signed from Hellas Verona in summer 2021. Quite the opposite. The 24-year-old finished last season on loan at relegation-bound Sassuolo.

But if the clip of that press conference from two and a half years ago recently went viral, it is because Mourinho was wrong about Calafiori.

On Saturday night in Dortmund, Calafiori lined up to sing the opening lyric of the Inno di Marmeli. The 22-year-old was one of the Fratelli d’Italia preparing to face Albania in Italy’s opening group game of Euro 2024.

In his Adidas anthem jacket, with his long hair held back by a thin headband, Calafiori at least fit the identikit of hall of famers such as Paolo Maldini, Alessandro Nesta and Fabio Cannavaro, the latter who effectively won the Ballon d’Or with a performance at that same stadium. “Cannavaro! Cannavaro! CANNAVARO!” Sky Italia commentator Fabio Caressa crescendo-ed as one German attack after another bounced off him in the 2006 World Cup semi-finals.

“Italy doesn’t have enough talent in this generation,” Mourinho said a fortnight ago.

But when the countdown to kick-off against Albania ended and referee Felix Zwayer blew his whistle, Calafiori smoothed down his blue jersey as if it were a Superman costume.

Italy may have conceded 11 seconds later, when Federico Dimarco inexplicably sent a throw-in back into his penalty area for Nedim Bajrami to blast into the roof of Gianluigi Donnarumma’s net. But, other than a scare in second-half stoppage time, Calafiori and his centre-back partner Alessandro Bastoni, who headed Italy’s swift equaliser, offered a persuasive vision of what the team’s defence can look like in the era after Leonardo Bonucci and Giorgio Chiellini.

The Albania game was only Calafiori’s third cap.

He had not played a single minute for Italy’s senior side until the pre-Euros warm-up friendlies this month against Turkey and Bosnia-Herzegovina and did not know if he would make the final 26-man squad for the tournament. But groin surgery in early June ruled Francesco Acerbi, Italy’s most experienced defender, out of the Euros and their most precocious one, Giorgio Scalvini, tore an anterior cruciate knee ligament (ACL) in Atalanta’s final game of an extended season.

All of a sudden, Calafiori’s pathway to a start became a ‘via libera’ (the coast is clear). He did not need to revert to the nickname his father gave him, ‘ruspa’ (bulldozer), to elbow his way into the side. Coach Luciano Spalletti still could have picked Roma’s Gianluca Mancini, as he did in the qualifiers. But throughout his nine-month tenure, Spalletti has expressed a preference for hybrid players who play multiple roles rather than single positions.

Tactically, Calafiori was the revelation of last season in Serie A — and a bargain, as Bologna signed him from Switzerland’s Basel last summer for €4million (£3.4m/$4.3m at the current exchange rates).

Calafiori’s agent, Alessandro Lucci, had sought a club where he could reinvent himself. Clubs around Europe had tended to consider Calafiori a full-back. After all, it was the position he had played in Roma’s academy and through the age groups for Italy. But at Basel, Heiko Vogel, the sporting director turned interim coach (curious, eh?), tried him a few times through the middle.

Bologna’s vision for Calafiori aligned with Lucci’s idea for the player, so they bought him for coach Thiago Motta to develop at the heart of his defence. The potential he excavated was huge.

Calafiori laid on five assists as Bologna qualified for Europe’s elite club competition proper for the first time. No central defender set his team-mates up more in Serie A. But Calafiori had to wait until his last game of the season to get among the goals himself.

That May morning, he went out for coffee with Bologna’s captain, and fellow Roman, Lorenzo De Silvestri. “I told him tonight you’re going to score,” said De Silvestri. He could feel it. His instincts were spot on.

Calafiori found the net twice as Bologna went 3-0 up against Juventus (it finished 3-3). In a memorable post-match interview, in which his girlfriend Benedetta kissed him while he answered questions about playing like John Stones, another team-mate, the uncontainable and ever cheerful Riccardo Orsolini shouted: “He was like Maldini!”

And yet Stones is the player Calafiori got compared to most last season: the build-up schemes designed by Motta involved him moving into midfield. “His style of play is closest to mine,” Calafiori said. “Stones is my reference. It’s not off-the-cuff when I go into midfield. It’s following the guidelines of the coach. He saw me in this role. I’ve learned oceans off him. The mister (coach) is revolutionary, smart, demanding and clear in what he wants.”


Calafiori has oozed class for Bologna and now Italy (Claudio Villa/Getty Images for FIGC)

Spalletti was in attendance for that Juventus game. But he must have made up his mind to bring Calafiori to Germany earlier. The call-up was not a reward for one performance but an entire season. Calafiori was in The Athletic’s Team of the Year in Serie A.

For someone with flowers in his name (Fiori in Italian), he hasn’t half blossomed.

As a kid in Roma’s academy, Calafiori used to get a lift to training with Daniele De Rossi, that club’s now head coach who recently lamented the haste with which the club sold him to Basel in summer 2022 (a fact made all the worse by the lack of a buy-back or sell-on clause in his contract).

Yet in October 2018, Calafiori had blown out his left knee in a Youth League game against Viktoria Plzen. It was the sort of injury that left his team-mates anxious, their heads in their hands. “My strength came from the fact I was so young I didn’t think too much about it and grasp the gravity of the situation,” he has said. “I never thought about giving up and calling it a day. I couldn’t wait to get back on the pitch.”

Calafiori’s then agent, the late Mino Raiola, made sure he got the best care possible, and sent him to the same specialist in America as had treated Zlatan Ibrahimovic. He came back stronger, but opportunities at Roma were still few and far between. Aleksandar Kolarov had yet to retire. Leonardo Spinazzola joined in the kind of form he took into the previous Euros three years ago, when, until he tore an Achilles tendon in the quarter-final against Belgium, he was Italy’s X factor. And Calafiori was still considered a full-back.

But how he has evolved. To watch him now is to see the future of centre-back play.

Bologna will not want to lose him — not on the cheap anyway, as Basel have a sell-on clause between 40 and 50 per cent. Motta wants Calafiori to follow him to his new employers Juventus. The likes of Bayern Munich have made inquiries. Manchester City are curious.

“Riccardo showed us he can be trusted and that he’s got the quality to be an international footballer,” Spalletti said. “When you have the ball, you are a defender. When he has it, you have to chase him, because he wants to go and score.”

Calafiori’s bulldozing runs were one of the features of his domineering performance against Albania.

Much has been made of this national team being Inter, the new champions of Italy. And blue and black fingerprints were all over that 2-1 defeat of Albania. Dimarco gave away the opening goal, Bastoni got it back to 1-1 and Nicolo Barella scored the winner. But it is actually a national team that speaks Roman.

Calafiori, Davide Frattesi, Gianluca Scamacca and Lorenzo Pellegrini all have accents from the Eternal City. The last time four players from Italy’s capital started for their country was in the opening game of the 2002 World Cup finals, against Ecuador. It is one of the many things that made Calafiori’s debut that little bit easier.

“I’m speechless,” he said after Saturday’s game. “I didn’t know I’d even make the final squad let alone start. All I felt was happiness because it’s a dream come true.”

Mourinho has been right about a lot of things in his career. But he was wrong about Kevin De Bruyne and Mohamed Salah at Chelsea. Turns out he was too hasty in his judgment of Calafiori, too.

(Top photo: Matt McNulty – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)



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