More

    Soccer News: Italy’s work is not finished after challenging the skeptics towards the final – Mancini

    Italy coach Roberto Mancini insisted that the Azzurri are not done yet after silencing their skeptics to reach the Euro 2020 final.

    Italy had not won the European Championship since 1968, but only one victory in the Euro is missing after the triumphant 4-2 on penalties against Spain on Tuesday.

    After the semi-final ended 1-1 at the end of extra time at Wembley, Italy goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma saved Alvaro Morata’s penalty while Jorginho converted the decisive penalty in London.

    Amidst the national record of 33 straight unbeaten wins, Italy will face England or Denmark in Sunday’s decisive match at Wembley.

    “We are delighted to have been able to offer this wonderful evening entertainment to the Italian people and now we still have a game to play and we want to do exactly that, if possible,” Mancini – who oversaw an extraordinary transformation after Italy’s failure to qualify. at the 2018 World Cup – he said at a press conference.

    We knew it was going to be a very tough match because Spain are the best in terms of possession. They caused us problems, we had to intervene when we needed it. We tried to score and create opportunities when we could, it was a very open game and obviously there were some problems because we didn’t have much ball possession.

    “Anyway we wanted to get to the final and we kept trying until the end and as always, penalties are a lottery, but I really want to congratulate Spain, they are a wonderful team.”

    Italy became the second team in the history of the European Championship after Euro 2000 winner France to have five different players who scored two or more goals in a single tournament, after Federico Chiesa’s lead in the 60th minute, which was canceled by Morata with 10 regulation minutes remaining.

    The Azzurri’s 12 goals at Euro 2020 are their highest tally in a major tournament along with the 2006, 1982 and 1934 World Cups. On each of those occasions, they left with the trophy.

    Italy has reached its tenth major final (World and European Championships), passing for the fourth time to the final of the European Championships (also six World Cup finals) – only Germany (14) has participated in more major finals among the European nations.

    Mancini said: “I have to say that we are very happy with all this, and I have to thank the players because they believed from day one that we could produce something incredible. We have not yet done everything necessary, there is still a step to take and now we have to rest because it was really very demanding.

    “I told them before the game that this was going to be our toughest game of the competition, because when you go to your sixth game in such quick succession with all the trips we’ve had to take, it gets very tiring. We certainly struggled with Spain’s possession and had some problems, but we wanted to reach the final ”.

    “I think that when you are involved in such an intense World Cup or European Championship, there always comes a match where you will have to work hard to win a match and suffer, because it can’t all be as smooth as our progress has been until the final four” , he continued. “So we knew it was going to be a very tough match and we knew this match was going to be the tough one. That’s why I think the players, and everyone who has worked with us for the past three years, deserve a lot of credit, why not. It was not easy at all. Almost no one believed that we would make it. Yet we are in the final. We are happy for the Italians from all over the world who have followed us in the last few weeks “.

    Mancini added: “Everyone wants to do it. Sometimes it comes off, sometimes less. But the players wanted to do something different, they wanted to play a kind of football that people liked and so far they have managed to do exactly that. The difficult tasks at the end are even more fun and we are very happy to have made it to the final, but we have not achieved anything yet. So we still have to wait ”.

    Related articles

    Comments

    Leave a Reply

    Share article

    Latest articles