Italy will face Greece in a friendly in Crete on Sunday, with Silvio Baldini taking charge of his second match as interim coach after Gennaro Gattuso’s resignation. The trip comes three days after Baldini’s debut, a 1-0 win over Luxembourg sealed by Francesco Pio Esposito.
The match arrives at a sensitive moment for both teams. Italy and Greece have both missed the World Cup that begins next week in Mexico, the United States and Canada, and Baldini is trying to set a tone without pretending he has had time to remake the side. He said he does not expect the team to be completely transformed after only three days of work, only that it should look organized again, as it did against Luxembourg.
That modest target fits the reality of the job. Baldini is only just settling in after replacing Gattuso, and Italy’s immediate task is not a rebuild but a first clean step toward stability. Francesco Pio Esposito’s goal gave that debut win some breathing room, but it also left Baldini with a short window before another test against a team that shares much of Italy’s recent pain.
Italy last played a World Cup in Brazil in 2014, and Greece did too. Greece’s history with the tournament stretches back to its first appearance in the United States in 1994, when it reached the round of 16, but this meeting in Crete will be about something more immediate: whether Italy can carry a narrow win and a new coach’s calm message into a second outing that offers little margin for drift.
Baldini has asked his players to represent the country with serenity, saying they must first represent themselves properly before anything else follows. He added that if they do what they know how to do, the rest will come by itself. Sunday will show whether that idea holds up once the match starts and the scoreboard matters again.
