Antonio Candreva and Alessandro Florenzi had last appeared together at an Azzurri press conference before the game against Norway in the last match of Euro 2016 qualification. The Azzurri won that day, thereby picking up their 7th victory of the campaign and finishing with an unbeaten record during qualifying. The match was played at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome which has witnessed both men’s coming of age and also hosts the fierce derbies where the Italy internationals meet on opposite sides at club level.

At the camp in Montpellier, however, the only rivalry between the players is over ping-pong. Neither gives an inch on the table-tennis table, which is a sign of a shared winning mentality that will be all important for the Italy team during these championships. “The Azzurri shirt unites all of us and should unite all football supporters in Italy”, declared Florenzi, “We communicate with each other very well and a lot of that is down to the gaffer and the way he gets us to buy into his philosophy.”

In the first round of matches at the current Euros, Italy ran further than anyone else (119.7km) even though the average age of the starting eleven was over 31 years old. “When you all run together towards the same goal, you could run another 100 km without feeling it.” said the Roma midfielder, “We hope that it’ll be the same in the coming matches”. A survey by the Swedish press revealed that Italy are the most feared team at Euro 2016: “This means that perhaps we aren’t the inadequate squad lacking skilful players that some newspapers suggested before the tournament. After the Belgium result, a lot of them have been eating their words. We need to think about action and we’ll leave the talking to others.”

Speaking of talking, Florenzi really struggled to respond to the journalists’ questions. “Excuse me”, he said with a broad smile, “but I left my voice in Lyon after supporting my teammates on the pitch”. The coming days could see Florenzi get his chance: “I’ve been available since the 18th May, I feel good. I know how to play anywhere in midfield apart from in Daniele [De Rossi]’s position. That means that I offer a lot of options to the boss and I hope I’ll get the opportunity to help the team.”

Last week, the player scored his most beautiful goal yet, even better than the one he scored against Barcelona in the Champions League. After a flying visit to Rome to attend the birth of his first daughter, Penelope, Florenzi received warm congratulations from his teammates on his return to Montpellier: “It’s the most important thing to have happened in my life. It’s something that changes your way of thinking and my daughter will improve my life, my wife’s life and the lives of her grandparents.”

As well as grabbing the assist for Pellè to make it 0-2, Antonio Candreva never took his foot off the accelerator against Belgium. “We’ve been doing important preparation since the 18th May” he explained, “We’re ready to play in all these up-coming matches”. Those matches start with Sweden on Friday: “They’ll have the game of their lives against us; we know it’ll be difficult but we want to seal qualification to the knock-out phase”. The number one danger comes in the form of Zlatan Ibrahimovic: “He’s a great champion”, agreed Candreva, “a fantastic player and he can hurt us all on his own, but we have to play our own game albeit with certain adaptations to counter their strengths and take advantage of their weaknesses”. Thinking of possible opponents in the last 16 will help nobody, especially in view of the recent past: “We still have to get through, making calculations now is wrong. We remember what happened at the World Cup in Brazil when we were knocked out after winning the first game.”

After a nod towards Marchisio, Verratti and the other Italy players who have missed the tournament through injury (“we’re playing for them as well and we know that they’re our biggest fans”), the Lazio midfielder confirmed that Buffon and Juventus’ defensive triumvirate constitute a point of reference for the rest of the team: “It’s right that it’s like that, they’re used to winning and used to these big occasions.”

Source:   figc.it

The Italy team started Euro 2016 with a win on the pitch but they also excelled in the world of Facebook and Twitter. The numbers behind the Azzurri’s success on social media, combined with record TV viewing figures (more on that here), speak for themselves…
Italy’s official Facebook page equalled that of host nation France as the national-team page that generated the most discussion about Euro 2016 during the week. It had an engagement rate of 1.5 million and gained 127,500 new followers.

But that’s not all! The most successful post – which announced the result of Belgium vs. Italy – reached nearly 8 million people, was shared 163,000 times and therefore became the most viral post of any national team in Euro 2016 (345,000 interaction rate).
An incredible number of people also decided to change their profile picture to the “ForzaAzzurri” badge. Following its publication on Sunday, the “Facebook frame” was used by over 1 million people. The Azzurri’s videos often went viral and on average were watched by 735,000 people. Not only that, they were often picked up and used in several important national media outlets (Watch here!).

There were also impressive figures from Twitter where the Azzurri have both an Italian language account (@Vivo_Azzurro) and an English language account (@azzurri). Since the beginning of June, @Vivo_Azzurro and @azzurri have posted over 700 tweets and generated around 20 million views. The most popular tweet was the one announcing the result of Italy’s match against Belgium which at the moment has over 400,000 views and nearly 5,000 retweets (on top of the 180,000 views and nearly 2,000 retweets of the same tweet on @azzurri).

The most popular items of multimedia content were the GIF of Graziano Pellè celebrating (over 200,000 views and 2,600 retweets on @Vivo_Azzurro) and the call to “retweet the flag” (over 200,000 views and 2,800 retweets on @azzurri). The animated GIFs with the personal celebrations of the Azzurri are one of the most original and popular innovations at the Euros!

France 2016 has also provided the opportunity for supporters in the Vivo Azzurro Community to enter two competitions: the first is the “Made for Italy” photography competition on Facebook and the other is the “#GifAZZURRI” competition for GIF enthusiasts on Twitter.

Source:  figc.it