If you’re a Manchester City or Manchester United fan, it might be worth giving Gazzetta dello Sport a miss today following England’s loss to Italy.
As usual the newspaper have provided their ratings of the performances in the game, rating everyone, including the managers, out of ten.
Like the rest of the European media, they’re relatively harsh with their scores and even Italy, who won the game, don’t get a score above a seven.
It makes for particularly grim reading if you’re Luke Shaw, Harry Maguire, Jack Grealish and Kyle Walker though.
The Manchester United duo both receive 5.5 for their performances, with Maguire described as ‘shy and a bit clumsy’, a far cry from the defender who was ‘dominant’ at the Euros and voted the best centre back alongside Leonardo Bonucci.
His Manchester United teammate Shaw doesn’t fare much better, having entered the game as a second half substitute for Bukayo Saka.
He is described as a player who ‘leaves no trace’ on the game, again a far cry from the man who was scoring in that final at Wembley not long ago.
Over to Manchester City, where Walker is given some of the harshest criticism doled out by the newspaper.
He is criticised for his failure to mark Raspadori properly for his goal and for ‘letting him do what he wants’.
Elsewhere he only offered ‘lots of useless balls‘ and ‘badly done’ passing in a performance that is unlikely to be remembered for any of the right reasons.
Manchester City teammate Grealish doesn’t fare much better, he gets a 5.5 and the question ‘who’s Grealish?
As far as the newspaper is concerned that’s a question which needs answering as to them, he’s only ‘hair in the wind’ and a ‘swaggering gait’ but nothing more.
They label him a ‘supposed trequartista’ but say the reality is he offers ‘nothing of substance’ to England, certainly not in this game anyway.
All in all, then, a chastening evening for the quartet, who would be advised to avoid reading this particular Italian newspaper after last nights showings.
