Danny Wright

Wed 18 October 2023 20:30, UK Updated Thu 19 October 2023 10:04, UK

Destiny Udogie made his full Italy debut on Tuesday but it wasn’t the sweetest of nights for the Tottenham left-back.

After the high of coming off the bench for his first senior international cap against Malta on 14 October, 20-year-old Udogie was brought back down to earth by a rampant England side, who secured qualification to the 2024 European Championships with a 3-1 win over the Italians at Wembley (17 October).

Italy’s automatic qualification hopes, however, are starting to wear thin as with two games left to play against North Macedonia and Ukraine, they are third in the group and three points behind Ukraine.

Udogie was trusted to start at left-back by manager Luciano Spalletti but the Tottenham ace lasted just 63 minutes before he was hooked off as he struggled to cope with the English attackers.

Stats by Wyscout show that the former Udinese ace won just five of the nine defensive duels he was involved in, didn’t win any of his three aerial duels, lost the ball seven times, committed three fouls and was booked.

Compared to his season average for Tottenham, Udogie’s defensive numbers were mostly worse while playing for the Azzurri against the Three Lions.

Udogie won more defensive duels against England than what he averages for Spurs – he was involved in nine at Wembley (winning 56 per cent of them). However, he’s only had to be in more than nine defensive duels on two occasions in the league and they were against Arsenal [11] and Liverpool [10]. Against Liverpool, he won 70 per cent of them.

Clearly, Udogie has to be involved more defensively when playing against better opposition. And while that’s expected, it can also make or break a team if a full-back cannot cope with fast-paced wide players.

For England’s second goal, Udogie was found out massively by England.

Gareth Southgate’s side countered quickly with Phil Foden sparking an attack not far outside of the home side’s penalty area. Udogie was close by when Foden started the break.

There was a moment of potentially poor communication between him and his teammate Bryan Cristante, who failed to track the run of Jude Bellingham through the middle when he should have allowed Udogie close down Foden.

Bellingham then receives the ball from Foden and continues the England counter-attack at an alarming pace for Italy’s defenders, causing Udogie to scramble back as quickly as possible.

You can see in the next image how well Udogie kept up with Bellingham despite the Real Madrid ace having a head start on the Spurs full-back.

But while Udogie showed impressive willingness and pace to help Italy defend, his defensive guile ultimately let him down as he pretty much allowed Marcus Rashford to put England ahead in the qualifying showdown.

In fairness to Udogie, it’s hard for him to know whether to stay with the run of Bellingham or to close down Rashford.

Unfortunately, the difficulty of the decision leads him to do neither as Bellingham runs past and Udogie seemingly freezes, allowing Rashford past him to score.

It wasn’t Udogie’s finest moment but there were reasons for him to be happy about his display too because going forward, he did prove to be a handful for England.

According to Wyscout, the 20-year-old hit the target with his only shot at goal, generating an xG of 1.11. He also completed the one and only dribble he attempted, won all three of his offensive duels, made two progressive runs and completed four of his five passes into the final third.

You can see in the video clip below how Udogie toyed with Foden before playing a beautiful outside-of-the-foot pass to start a one-two that led to his shot, that was saved by Jordan Pickford.

Udogie can be proud of himself for this international break.

Sure, it didn’t end the way he would have hoped it would but this lad is only 20 and there are going to be a lot more Italy matches to come for him to hone his defensive work and become a new name on the list of all-star Italian full-backs.

At this stage of his career, he’s already a brilliant full-back and both on the ball and off the ball, he’s only going to get better with age.

Spurs have themselves a real talent on their hands – and so do Italy.

In other Tottenham news, an injury expert doesn’t expect to see Manor Solomon back in Ange Postecoglou’s squad until at least January.