Late night PlayStation? Not on Luciano Spalletti’s watch

Dortmund, June 14

Turns out Luciano Spalletti isn’t such a killjoy, after all.

The Italy coach has been portrayed as quite the disciplinarian for urging his players to turn off the video games and get more sleep. Indeed, striker Gianluca Scamacca was reportedly dropped from the squad in March because of an obsession with his PlayStation.

Spalletti, though, wants to put the record straight.

“I have nothing against any sort of game,” he said today, a day before Italy begins the defence of its European Championship title. “On the contrary, we have created a games room where there are two wonderful, modern, cutting-edge PlayStations that everyone goes there and plays. I have even had a go on it myself!”

What Spalletti really takes issue with, however, is his players playing video games late into the night and that affects their performances in training the following morning. That simply will not happen during his tenure, which began less than a year ago.

“I don’t think it’s acceptable they are awake until 3 or 4 am,” he continued. “They say, But, we are used to it, we’ll sleep in the morning.’ No, we need to sleep at night. There are psychoanalysts who have proved it, professors in any area of the world who will give you indications of that. We need to make sure we impart a correct lifestyle so we can produce our best football.” — AP