Muhahahahha what a match to win via lottery!
Amazing experience. Antonio Conte is part psycho part genius. It's incredible to watch him for 90 minutes. I don't think I saw him stand still for even a second. Either instructing a player, or yelling at his staff and subs.. His energy alone lifts this team to a threshold level. Amazing guy.
The team was magnificent, particularly the first 15 minutes. I had no idea Italy was gonna play like this off the blocks. Around 30-35% of the stadium was Italian tifosi, rest were all Spanish. But the noise made was easily more from the Italians.
I appreciate Giaccherini so much more after watching him live. He's very pivotal to the way this team plays. So is de Rossi and even de Sciglio had a pretty nifty game.
The smoothest triangles and understanding that I saw was between Giac, De Sciglio and Chiellini.
But of course, as is obvious to everyone, the spine of this team is BBC and Buffon. The four of them just seem so bloody cool. Even when Spain started putting pressure later on, they just transmitted this sense of calm to everyone else. Especially Gigi who was almost as calm as someone playing a practice game. Incredible body language.
Loudest cheers in the stadium were for his series of saves in the last ten minutes.
Tactically, Conte got this absolutely spot on. De Rossi dominated his area early on, spending plenty of energy (probably planning a 50 min game from the beginning) and kept getting the wing backs involved.. And Spain struggled to close them down while Giac kept slipping past. They seemed to have been expecting a much more reactive game from Italy. Seemed to have no particular game plan in mind.
Del bosque looked indifferent and bored half the time. His staff was more animated.
cuntromancer you absolute cunt!
roud:
Five Milan shirts in the ground that I spotted including mine. Two Napoli, two Juve and one Roma.