Italy Under-21 CT Luigi Di Biagio admits Spain are “favourites” for tomorrow’s European Championship semi-final.
The Azzurrini qualified by beating Germany 1-0 on Saturday night, and will face the Spaniards in Krakow tomorrow.
“We have to watch out for their technique and their tactics,” Di Biagio said in the pre-match Press conference.
“Unsurprisingly they’ve dominated against almost all of the Under-21 teams. We’re here to pull off a feat though, and it’s within our capabilities.
Italy Under-21 CT Luigi Di Biagio admits Spain are “favourites” for tomorrow’s European Championship semi-final.
The Azzurrini qualified by beating Germany 1-0 on Saturday night, and will face the Spaniards in Krakow tomorrow.
“We have to watch out for their technique and their tactics,” Di Biagio said in the pre-match Press conference.
“Unsurprisingly they’ve dominated against almost all of the Under-21 teams. We’re here to pull off a feat though, and it’s within our capabilities.
“Spain are rightly favourites, because they’re a great team.
“We have the ability to play with different formations. The only certainty is the four in defence, we could change something in midfield or up-front.
“Having a day less to recover? Speaking logically it could be a disadvantage, but football is illogical so often.
“Looking for excuses and pre-preparing justifications isn’t my thing. We can’t think about that right now, we just have to prepare in the best way.”
Di Biagio then gave an update on the players who will be unavailable .
“Mattia Caldara is a serious doubt, in the morning we’ll assess whether to risk him or not. The others, apart from minor niggles, are all fine.
“Andrea Conti and Domenico Berardi? We have high-level replacements, we have 23 players here and all of them can play.”
There has been outrage in Slovakia after the Germany result eliminated their team, with the Prime Minister describing it as “an orchestrated farce” and the Coach saying it was “not fair play”.
“It falls into the realms of the ridiculous,” Di Biagio retorted.
“Two years ago we could have complained about a particular game but we didn’t do it.
“He [Coach Pavel Hapal] clearly didn’t see the game and I hope UEFA ban him because he plays a very important role.
“Listening to certain inferences makes me angry and disappoints me after what happened on the pitch, because there were seven bookings.”