Italy, unable to beat Northern Ireland (0-0) Monday in Belfast and capped with Post by Switzerland, victorious from Bulgaria (4-0), will have to go through the dams in March.
Le Monde with AFP
For Italy, Qatar is still far away. Great Abstants of the World-2018, the European Champions missed, Monday, November 15 in Northern Ireland (0-0), the direct ticket for the next World Cup, Chipé by Switzerland, and will have to play again. uncertain dams.
“What disappointment!”, have sighed the Gazzetta dello Sport and all the Italian media, sit down the final whistle: the final dual remotely won by Switzerland, brilliant against Bulgaria (4-0) While a dull Italy has been unable to force the North Irish lock. Switzerland ends with two points ahead of Azzurri.
Belfast, where Italy had already spun a World Cup qualification in 1958 by bowing during a decisive qualification match (1-2), will have been again a land of disillusionment for Nazionale.
Trauma
The team of Roberto Mancini has lost the speed and enthusiasm that took him to Europe’s roof five months ago. And despite the monopoly of the ball (nearly 70% of possession), it will stop on the compact North Irish defense, undefeated at home during the qualifications.
By Mars, the date of the dams, Italy will have the leisure to recover but also to tremble in rebeying with the trauma of November 2017: this dam lost against Sweden (0-1, 0-0) , the depriving world cup for the first time in sixty years, an apocalypse for a generation of tifosi. Sweden, which has finished so much second in its group, is one of the opponents that Italy could find on its route, with other large customers (Portugal, Poland, Russia …).
By bringing back serenity, play and a title, Roberto Mancini seemed to have relegated these ghosts to oblivion. But they brutally caught up Italy in November, with two draws against Switzerland (1-1) and then in Northern Ireland.
Donnarumma avoids the hold-up
As expected, Italy confiscated the entrance balloon, sweeping the ground to try to find some spaces between eleven North Irish players fully folded in their midfield. The attempts at Squadra Azzurra have often missed impact to worry about the North Irish doorman, serene in front of Giovanni di Lorenzo (8 e ), Nicolo Barella (18 e ), Lorenzo badge (28 e , 37 e ) and Federico Chiesa (32 e ). There has often been a little too much precipitation in the choices of Azzurri, including the usual dynamics – Chiesa, Barella, Berardi – have not managed to extricate from the nasse.
Italy has even brought the correctional in the second half, Gianluigi Donnarumma coming out of a determining stop in front of George Saville (51 e ), just after Switzerland took the lead by opening the mark against Bulgaria. Leonardo Bonucci also avoided the humiliation of a defeat at the end of the game by saving a burning balloon in front of his line.
Faced with the desperate sterility of his team (Chiesa next door, 63 e ), Mancini played everything for all by launching Andrea Belotti, Federico Bernardeschi and Manuel Locatelli, but without changing the Meaning of a rough match.
The dams all of Italy dreaded now wait for the European Champions: it will be necessary to finally win, what the Azzurri did only twice in seven games since their European coronation in Wembley. The world? “I am totally confident, and perhaps we will gain it …”, however, ensures the incorrigible optimistic Mancini.