On 21 November last year, Willy Gnonto’s 96th-minute goal in the Ireland vs Italy game in Cork prevented what would have been the first defeat for the Italy U-21 side in their European Championship campaign. They then drew with Turkey in Ferrara and won their last two matches against San Marino and Norway. On Tuesday at the Stadio Nereo Rocco in Trieste, they will meet Ireland again in a crucial match in which Gnonto’s goal played a crucial role: the Azzurrini only need a draw to finish top of Group A and avoid any second-place play-offs.
Arriving in Trieste on Sunday evening, Italy spent a week at the Centro di Preparazione Olimpica in Tirrenia in preparation for the match, watching Ireland and Norway play out a 1-1 draw, but above all concentrating on the most important 90 minutes for the last 13 months, since the draw at home to Latvia at the start of the campaign. “We have worked well and the boys are doing well,” said Carmine Nunziata at his pre-match press conference. “I definitely have some doubts about the formation because there are a lot of boys who deserve to play. I think the players are calm, also because they have important values. At the beginning of the two-year period, we set ourselves the goal of going to the European Championship and we’ll do our best to achieve that. I will ask the team the usual things: to play football, to do it with intensity and to do it with a smile, because the boys know how get the job done.”
Nunziata described Ireland as “a good team with quality players”. But the coach is more concerned with Italy’s performance: “We have to play our game, also because we have studied our opponents, looking for something that will cause them problems.” In this sense, the ability of the forwards can be decisive: Gnonto, who scored a brace in Ireland, said that in September it was Pio Esposito’s show (four goals in San Marino), then Baldanzi’s with a hat-trick in Norway. “Recently, there have been boys from midfield who have technical qualities and can find space,” continued Nunziata. “I think it is fundamental for them to play, and the same goes for the boys from 2005 such as Comuzzo (called up to the U-21s on Friday after the Italy vs England U-20 game, Ed.) and Palestra.”
Nunziata also called on the people of Trieste to support Italy: “We expect Trieste, with all its footballing history, to give us a big hand. A warm and appreciative crowd will give us that extra essential push.”
THE SQUAD LIST
Goalkeepers: Sebastiano Desplanches (Palermo), Jacopo Sassi (Modena), Gioele Zacchi (Latina);
Defenders: Nicolò Bertola (La Spezia), Giovanni Bonfanti (Pisa), Pietro Comuzzo (Fiorentina), Daniele Ghilardi (Hellas Verona), Marco Palestra (Atalanta), Lorenzo Pirola (Olympiacos), Nicolò Savona (Juventus), Riccardo Turicchia (Catanzaro), Mattia Zanotti (Lugano);
Midfielders: Tommaso Baldanzi (Roma), Alessandro Bianco (Monza), Edoardo Bove (Fiorentina), Cesare Casadei (Chelsea), Giovanni Fabbian (Bologna), Jacopo Fazzini (Empoli), Cher Ndour (Besiktas), Matteo Prati (Cagliari);
Fowards: Giuseppe Ambrosino (Frosinone), Francesco Pio Esposito (Spezia), Wilfried Gnonto (Leeds), Luca Koleosho (Burnley), Antonio Raimondo (Venice)
