Giampiero Ventura defends his choices in the World Cup play-off against Sweden and insists “Italy results were some of the best of the last 40 years.”
The first leg of the play-off with Sweden is tonight at 19.45 GMT, click here for the line-ups and Liveblog.
“I have a lot of faith, as in three days over 70,000 tickets were sold for the second leg in Milan on Monday,” the Coach told Rai Sport.
Giampiero Ventura defends his choices in the World Cup play-off against Sweden and insists “Italy results were some of the best of the last 40 years.”
The first leg of the play-off with Sweden is tonight at 19.45 GMT, click here for the line-ups and Liveblog.
“I have a lot of faith, as in three days over 70,000 tickets were sold for the second leg in Milan on Monday,” the Coach told Rai Sport.
“Italy are here and this gives us further motivation to take this World Cup ticket home. I am happy with what we’ve done over these months.”
Of the starting XI in Solna this evening, seven are over the age of 30 and it looks like a 3-5-2 formation that Antonio Conte might’ve used at Euro 2016.
“Of course, if I played a World Cup play-off with players like Nicolò Barella or Bryan Cristante who have barely any international experience, it would be presumptuous and rude.
“We hope that it all goes well and after this we can resume the growth process. We cannot cancel out a year-and-a-half of work for two games.
“I don’t have to get anything off my chest. At times I consider it this way: these two games decide the future, but before that there was a year-and-a-half of work done with great professionalism.
“We did things that had never been done before, the results were some of the best of the last 40 years. The negativity around us is exaggerated. I say that because we must protect the image of Italy.”