Prandelli hails Italy's "interesting future"

By FOX Sports Staff

Prandelli was speaking after his side's 1-1 international friendly draw against Holland where they were left ragged by a markedly better Dutch side. 

The Oranje were only denied a win by a late goal by Marco Verratti and some sterling goalkeeping by Gianluigi Buffon. The Azzurri were also dealing with a tactical change within the game as they chose to employ a 4-3-3 formation with two wingers supporting a lone frontman. 

The national coach wants to continue employing this formation with Balotelli as the key focus but he wants the enigmatic forward to link up better with El Shaarawy in the future. He was also impressed by 20-year-old Verratti who scored his first goal for the national side. 

"They obviously need to work together. Mario knows he's not in great shape and needs to recover, but we have an interesting future to work on," Prandelli told RAI Sport.

"Verratti has great character and technique, but he needs to be quicker in midfield and be far more tactical. He scored a fantastic goal, though."

In the past, Prandelli has usually tinkered with the side's formation and achieved much success with a three-man backline and two forwards during Euro 2012. In this manner, they were able to defeat an energetic Germany side and even defeated England on penalties but only fell at the last hurdle with a comprehensive defeat to eventual winners Spain in the final. 

He wants his side to quickly adapt to their new tactical set-up in order which he feels will better utilise their talents. 

"We didn't want to lose and we didn't want to concede," he added.  

"Obviously the 4-3-3 system is particular and we need time to work on the details, but I saw interesting things in the first half. 

"We need more character, as we have the players with the right qualities.

"The system we worked more on is the 4-3-1-2, so it is natural we will be more comfortable with it, but we have to do better with the 4-3-3 too."