I think in my honest opinion, much as he wanted to get paid, he should have approached the issue with a sober mind.
If he used his money to travel, then that shows some level of commitment to the team. But all this is watered down by his insistence on getting paid first before playing.
A better approach would have been to insist on the ticket being sent to him in Italy, so that if the management failed to do so, then his failure to travel and consequently missing from the team would have been squarely blamed on the same management - leaving him blameless and innocent.
But as it is now, it hard for anyone to listen to him creating excuses for not honoring national duty..
If you are going to be thinking only one thing, you might as well be thinking big. -Donald J . Trump