Italy repeats. Seventy-two hours after the 3-1 against France, Luciano Spalletti’s national team also beat Israel. At the Bozsik Arena in Budapest, a neutral venue chosen for this match, the Azzurri took the lead in the 38th minute with Frattesi and doubled their lead with Kean shortly after the hour mark. With time running out, Israeli midfielder Abu Fani made it 1-2.
Luciano Spalletti said this at the end of the match: “The team showed itself to be very mature despite its young age. There was difficulty with the traffic in their half of the pitch, everything was much denser and more closed. It wasn’t easy. We had to keep our balance for their counterattacks because then Israel played brilliantly, with frequency and quality. We were very good at suffering so little. We didn’t let ourselves get nervous because things weren’t going very well for us, but then we created a lot of chances. What needs to be highlighted is the depth of maturity of these guys, in the first half the average age was really low”.
Then in another passage he added: “The next few days will be very positive reflections. This call-up was thought through a lot, I only thought about this during the summer. I wanted to get younger and the responses were perfect, what I expected. I changed something and the team showed that it had the qualities I expected, we played two very good games. Now we just have to strengthen the initial idea and be careful because maybe someone, in addition to those 2-3 who are already part of this group but we left at home, could join in”.
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