Italy's national team fans are seriously worried - the "Azzurri" lost the first match of the World Cup play-offs and may miss out on qualifying for the main tournament stage in Russia.
Italy yesterday suffered a 0-1 defeat to Sweden in the first leg. The second leg, which will determine the winner of the ticket to Russia, will take place next Monday in Milan.
Italy's coach Gian Piero Ventura, criticized by the press and fans for his tactics, is convinced that this result doesn't mean anything yet, and that the Italians can fight for victory by changing some game details in the return leg.
"Today we could have done more and better, but we still have another 90 minutes ahead of us," G. Ventura said after the match. "We wanted to control the flow of the game and we did it well. Sometimes we easily broke into the opponent's penalty area, but there were situations where it was difficult to do due to physically prepared Swedish team."
"The result is very bad because we could have won. Andrea Belotti was close to scoring, later Matteo Darmian hit the crossbar. We had opportunities, but we didn't take advantage of them. This result doesn't change anything yet. We know where we can improve. We will have one more match where we will try to show our true face," added G. Ventura.
