{"id":203319,"date":"2025-06-21T19:52:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T19:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/203319\/"},"modified":"2025-06-21T19:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T19:52:10","slug":"germany-u21-head-coach-antonio-di-salvo-speaks-on-personnel-choices-ahead-of-italy-clash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/203319\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany U21 head coach Antonio Di Salvo speaks on personnel choices ahead of Italy clash"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the Germany U21 \u201cB-squad\u201d helped the team conclude an undefeated group stage on Wednesday evening<\/a>, head coach Antonio Is Salvo has some personnel decisions to make ahead of the next match. The DFB-Juniors are due to face the Italian U21s in the U21 European Championship quarterfinals tomorrow. Di Salvo remained enthusiastic about the upcoming fixture when speaking at a Saturday press round.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a knockout match,\u201d Di Salvo emphasized. \u201cMy [Italian] roots naturally come into play [when thinking about the game] occasionally, but I\u2019m focused on the game. [The England performance] makes my selection process harder, but I\u2019m happy to have hard decisions to make. I\u2019m happy that the lads delivered a top performance against a top opponent.\u201d<\/p>\n

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With passage to the knockouts already booked, Di Salvo actually ended up rotating out his entire XI against England on Wednesday. In a pre-match interview, di Salvo revealed that he initially planned to \u201cleave at least one axial [player pairing on the pitch]\u201d, but ultimately decided to rest everyone after consultation with the players. Di Salvo also interestingly stated \u201cone piece of the puzzle then leads to the next\u201c.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I definitely have to think about it,\u201d Di Salvo answered when asked if anyone from Wednesday\u2019s XI would start on Sunday. \u201cThe idea was to force me to think about it. The team really presented itself excellently. Many players were able to come to the fore. Not all eleven will play, that\u2019s already clear, but I\u2019m already thinking about making some changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many players made a good impression against England. Mainz\u2019s Nelson Weiper scored his first ever Germany U21 goal,<\/a>yet probably won\u2019t displace the tournament\u2019s current leading goal scorer, Stuttgart\u2019s Nick Woltemade. Eintracht Frankfurt\u2019s Ansgar Knauff, on the other hand, may parlay his excellent performance into a start over Brighton\u2019s Brajan Gruda, who is sitting on a yellow card.<\/p>\n

Freiburg\u2019s Merlin R\u00f6hl may also start over Borussia M\u00f6nchengladbach\u2019s Rocco Reitz, who is also sitting on a booking. New Bayer Leverkusen signing Tim Oermann also did a fine job deputizing for Freiburg\u2019s Max Rosenfelder in central defense. Given that the Italians have employed plenty of tactical shifts in the tournament thus far, Di Salvo may wish to make some subtle tweaks ahead of the forthcoming match.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will work on things on the final training session and decide on the starting XI tomorrow,\u201d Di Salvo concluded.<\/p>\n

GGFN |\u00a0Peter Weis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the Germany U21 \u201cB-squad\u201d helped the team conclude an undefeated group stage on Wednesday evening, head coach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[81957,81955,3018,29228,2695,1169,5808,393,2000,299,25632,1824,2199,81958,81960,67409,81961,38555,81959,81956],"class_list":{"0":"post-203319","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-ansgar-knauff","9":"tag-antonio-di-salvo","10":"tag-bayer-leverkusen","11":"tag-borussia-monchengladbach","12":"tag-brajan-gruda","13":"tag-brighton","14":"tag-eintracht-frankfurt","15":"tag-england","16":"tag-eu","17":"tag-europe","18":"tag-freiburg","19":"tag-germany","20":"tag-italy","21":"tag-max-rosenfelder","22":"tag-nelson-weiper","23":"tag-nick-woltemade","24":"tag-rocco-reitz","25":"tag-stuttgart","26":"tag-tim-oermann","27":"tag-u21-european-championship"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114723104188709262","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}