Davide Calabria

CM: Calabria has burning desire to win back Italy spot after Spalletti snub

The Italy head coach has changed from Roberto Mancini to Luciano Spalletti, but what hasn’t altered is the disregard for AC Milan’s captain Davide Calabria.

Calciomercato.com writes how Calabria has not just been a starter but also a pillar of the excellent recent years that Stefano Pioli’s side have had, but this is not being taken into consideration by the coaches who have followed one another on the Azzurri bench.

Ventura had him training with the team, but Calabria made his debut with Mancini as coach. From then on he only put together seven appearances with two coming in 2020, three in 2021 and two more in 2022.

The Italy squad will train at Milanello in a few days but the right-back will watch from the sidelines. Spalletti has chosen to focus on Giovanni Di Lorenzo and he even recalled Matteo Darmian, who looks like he has lost his starting spot at Inter.

Calabria has a contract until 2025 with Milan and – even if the club has shown that with the right offer all players can leave, as Sandro Tonali showed – his future still has a very strong red and black tinge.

Pioli relies heavily on him and appreciates his technical abilities and tactical flexibility. In fact, he has often given his full-back a double role: in addition to his canonical jousting on the wing, Calabria comes into the middle of the pitch too to help build-up play.

It should not be surprising that – thanks to his tactical possibilities – the club chose not to sign a deputy to Theo Hernandez. That role could be filled by Florenzi or even Marco Pellegrini, but the captain would answer the call too.

When the captain needs to rest, Pioli has often opted for Kalulu, although he prefers him as a central defender. Calabria on the other hand is always there and his aim is to win back his Italy spot too.

Tags AC Milan Davide Calabria

16 Comments

    1. He’s part of a long line of league winners who were snubbed by at international level.

      Panucci was our first choice RB in 93/94 and was snubbed in the 94 World Cup in favour his understudy Tassotti.

      Things don’t always make sense. Managers, like fans, have different preferences.

      But the most bizarre thing is how so many modern fans constantly have glass half full attitudes to their own players, even the 19’ers.

      These people should be living legends. But instead the majority of them are ridiculed by their own fans. Kind of makes winning the Scudetto pointless if the fans don’t even appreciate it.

    1. Useless? You seem to have a short memory, in our Scudetto winning campaign he was excellent, he was statistically ranked the 8th best defender in Serie A, not just right back, but overall, his defensive stats were incredible. https://footystats.org/players/italy/davide-calabria

      Looks like you didn’t watch any of our games, the guy even chipped in with 3 assists and 2 goals which was the same output offensively as Tonali, and defensively his tackling, interceptions and duels won were incredible. Maybe you should stop listening to what everyone says and actually watch a match for once. Sure he’s a bit off physical form right now, but he’s regaining his fitness after the injury. You should wise up instead of spewing a bunch of rubbish.

      1. You shouldn’t need to point this out to our own fans. This should be an argument we’re having with inter and Napoli fans not having to defend the club against unjustified criticism from our own fans.

        It just makes the whole thing pointless and impossible.

        Loyalty actually matters. Loyalty is the difference between success and failure. Players need to band together and fight for each other, and the fans have to fight for the players. This is far more important than having the perfect starting 11 that has robot like perfection (ie that doesn’t exist).

        If the fans are constantly dishing the players the whole, and the directors are chopping and changing, it doesn’t work. Loyalty never takes hold.

        Look at how we’ve treated the 19’ers.

        Look at how we treated the likes of Saelemaekers.

        This does not breed the sort of loyalty required to win titles where players will do anything for each other. All that’s left ks some superficial social media posts by players who have only just met each other.

      2. 🤩🤩
        I call them bunch of fools. Even de lorenzo couldn’t not stop Leao. But my captain stopped napoli best player and rendered him useless on 3 consecutive time….. without more than a single shot on target

    2. Useless? Definitely not. He made some mistakes but definitely not useless.

      It’s just sad how some fans act like this towards players who gave it all for their favorite club :/

  1. He was our best defensive player in the Scudetto season and ranked as the 8th best defender in Serie A statistically in that campaign, not just as a right back but as overall in the league. And chipping in with the a couple of goals and assists himself. He is slowly but surely returning to form, Mancini was an idiot to leave him out and let’s not forget he left out Tonali too, so the people who say he’s rubbish i hope you say the same about Tonali too so we can see how stupid you are.

    1. that was 2 years ago. This dude is constantly getting dusted. He’s decent but you gotta face facts that Di Lorenzo is a better RB. Period.

  2. Luciano Spalletti just has personal problems with Davide Calabria. Because his beloved Napoli winger : Khvicha Kvaratskhelia always stopped by Calabria, and can only do bad long shots, leaving Spalletti in hard time when at Napoli.

    Then Spalletti’s beloved RB is Di Lorenzo, even made him to didn’t see that Di Lorenzo always destroyed by Leao last season.

    Italy will never reach anything with Luciano Spalletti, if he keep this.

    1. Stop already with this lie. Calabria did not shut down KVara. Milan had at least 2 people on him every time he had the ball. There was always a defender to his inside, and he still got beat to the outside on multiple occasions.

  3. Every ac milan player is good and better than any inter, juve or napoli player, we are ac milan, we are proud of our team, we enjoy watching our team, if you love players from other teams better go and support those teams, ac milan’s current captain is calabria, the coach is pioli, forevermilan

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