When Marco Verratti left Pescara as a teenager to live by the Seine, he had a falling out with neighbours in his Parisian apartment block. To those who have followed his career closely, it probably will not come as too much of a surprise to learn he got into an argument. Verratti is always in somebody’s ear, usually the referee’s after watching him reach into his top pocket for a yellow card to sanction another late challenge.
At the time, the residents’ committee in Verratti’s condominium could not care less about this diminutive Italian with eyes as blue as one of the lakes in Abruzzo being the darling of Paris Saint-Germain’s new Qatari owners, who had gazumped Juventus to pluck him out of the second division back home and unveil him in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower and the giant figure of his new team-mate Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Verratti explained: “I put a satellite dish up on the terrace so I could watch Pescara’s games and they asked me to take it down. A week later, I moved.”
When Verratti tore the medial ligament in his right knee at the beginning of May, it looked like he might be spending another European Championship on his chaise lounge in the Neuilly district of Paris, watching Italy play on TV. “For the first five days after the injury I didn’t think I was going to make it,” he said after Sunday’s 1-0 win over Wales in their Group A finale. “It was tough. I was reliving the nightmare I had in 2016 all over again.”
Verratti’s international career has mostly been troubled by badly-timed knocks and coaches who preferred Marco Parolo or Emanuele Giaccherini to him for their system.
He made his Italy debut in the same summer he moved to Paris. They had just finished as runners-up at the 2012 European Championship and Cesare Prandelli handed PSG’s Napoleonic midfield strategist his first cap against England at the Wankdorf Stadium in Switzerland. His first, and up until now only, major tournament was the World Cup two years later when, in the Amazonian jungle where Manaus is stuck in its sticky and green grasp, he played an hour next to Andrea Pirlo on a night when the English wilted and Tiki-Italia was born in sweat-drenched blue.
Verratti will be 29 in November and when his right knee buckled in training six weeks ago, he feared those 132 minutes played in Brazil, now a speck seven years in the past, might be the only time he had the chance to represent his country on the big stage. For a while it looked like the most memorable thing he ever did for Italy was wear No 2 in homage to Mohamed Kallon, the former Inter Milan striker who was a cult hero of Verratti’s as a kid growing up near the Adriatic coast.
Surgery on his groin kept him out of the last Euros in 2016 and while going under the knife was not pleasant, the pain of not playing for Italy in host nation France, the place Verratti calls home, the place where he is a star, was harder to bear. More tears were shed over the failure to qualify for the World Cup in Russia and the pandemic-enforced one-year delay of Euro 2020 further prolonged Verratti’s wait to be stood in line, belting out the last lyric of the Inno di Mameli, “Siam pronti alla morte” — “We’re ready to die” — to the 60 million Italians watching on TV at home.
Then once again in May, as PSG’s title chances also went up in smoke, he was consumed by the fear he might be laid up and channel-hopping like your average Giuseppe, a spectator and nothing more. It was all too much to take.
News of his injury also hit Roberto Mancini and his staff hard. Although Leonardo Bonucci opined on the eve of the opening ceremony “the team is the star” — and he is broadly correct — Verratti is one of the best players in the world in his position, a rare player, and the one who Mancini has built his national team around more than any other, with Jorginho and Lorenzo Insigne figuring highly as foundational pieces.
It baffled the backheel-playing Italy coach that Verratti and Jorginho had never duetted together under predecessor Antonio Conte or Giampiero Ventura. The one time they were paired up was in a friendly against Argentina at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium in March 2018, when caretaker boss Luigi Di Biagio was still in charge. It begged the question: Had Verratti been fit and available for Euro 2016, had Italy qualified for the 2018 World Cup, would he have played anyway?
After all, Conte wants the midfielder playing in Verratti’s position to act as a runner who is willing to break lines with dashes behind the defence to finish off the crosses from his wing-backs. Ventura was no different and so Verratti — like Christian Eriksen in his first year at Inter — had to adapt to an awkward way of playing that put the system first and a player’s individual skill set second. Verratti is not Arturo Vidal or Claudio Marchisio, nor is he Pirlo.
Instead of a chess piece, Verratti is a chessmaster — a title some Italian coaches want for themselves — and Mancini deserves credit for recognising Italy’s No 6 for what he is — a mezzala di possesso. The translation: Italy’s Xavi, and it was never a surprise that the Catalan wanted Verratti at Barcelona to succeed him and Andres Iniesta. “Verratti’s an exceptional player,” Xavi has said. “I like watching him play, I like his vision, his passes, the fact he never loses the ball. He’d adapt perfectly to the way Barcelona play.”
Ever since October 2018, when Mancini first trialled Jorginho, Nicolo Barella and Verratti in a friendly against Ukraine — who are likely to be Italy’s opponents at Wembley in the round of 16 on Saturday evening — the composition of his midfield was not only sorted, so too was the style of his Azzurri.
In the meantime, no shortage of neat and tidy spidey-sensed web spinners have emerged. Stefano Sensi skipped from Sassuolo to Inter where, for a brief moment, he looked like the heir to Wesley Sneijder, only for his body to break down. Sandro Tonali helped Brescia up to Serie A and then got his big move to AC Milan, where he has struggled. Manuel Locatelli overcame the disappointment of being sold by Milan to thrive at Sassuolo and had lit up the early days of these Euros while deputising for Verratti.
But now il guffetto — or “little owl” as Verratti is known, for his all-seeing eyes and head on a swivel — is back.
“I knew I had nothing to lose,” he said on Sunday night. “I worked out two or three times a day. I’d like to thank PSG. If I’m here today, it’s down to their staff and Mancini, who was patient enough to wait for me.”
Right knee heavily strapped-up in blue Kinesio tape, Verratti ran out for his patria for the first time at a major tournament since that miserable day in Recife in 2014, when a late Diego Godin goal sent Uruguay through and Italy home in disgrace after another group-stage exit.
Sunday was a much more pleasant experience. Remember, Verratti is yet to play in Serie A, so these games at the Stadio Olimpico are still a novelty for him. Nevertheless, as a veteran at PSG — people forget he’s the longest-serving player at the wealthiest club in the world — arenas like this do not faze him. Concern about his potential absence was twofold. Only Bonucci and captain Giorgio Chiellini have played more minutes under Champions League lights than the man from Manoppello and he has emerged as a genuine orchestra conductor, albeit using his mouth and magical feet more than a baton.
The finals this quartet (completed by new Champions League winner Jorginho) now have under their belts in Europe’s elite competition give them an authority and charisma that goes some way to explaining Italy’s assuredness and composure under Mancini.
Verratti was displaced by an earthquake as a kid and spent weeks sleeping in the family car. On the pitch, his legs don’t tremble.
If you want to frighten him, put on Tom & Jerry. He’s musophobic (scared of mice), jumping on a table in his Paris home and shouting, “I’m shaking!”, before getting on the phone to book a suite at €2,000 per night hotel when an Italian TV show decided to prank him by pretending to infest his apartment with squeaky plastic versions of the cheese-loving rodents.
It was from Verratti’s smartly-struck free kick that Italy’s goal arrived against Wales and the eight changes Mancini made to his starting XI — his subsequent substitutions meant he has used 25 of the 26 players in his squad across the three group games — mattered little when the ball, as Italians say, was locked in a safe with “Marcolino” keeping it and passing it 110 times.
As Italy prepare to fly to London, the Armani-attired Mancini now has to decide whether to stay true to the midfield that got him to the Euros or revert back to Locatelli in acknowledgement of his sumptuous performances against Turkey and Switzerland.
Luckily, team spirit is so buoyant at Coverciano after winning all three matches without conceding a single goal that his players will accept whatever decision he takes. “I’d go on the bench for this nazionale,” Verratti said on Sunday. “It’s not like when you’re at your club and being on the bench is hard to take. It’s a pleasure to be here pulling on this jersey and taking part in a competition where you get to represent millions of people.”
Whatever choice Mancini makes for Wembley, it is just a joy to know Verratti will not be watching the Euros at home and we will have the chance to see him play for Italy on this stage instead.
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