The team of defending champions Italy which crashed out in the first round of the World Cup produced the worst performance of any Italian lineup in the history of the competition, the country’s press said on Friday.
“It’s total darkness,” titled leading sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport. “The worst Italy we have ever seen go out.”
Italy were eliminated after a 2-3 defeat by minnows Slovakia left coach Marcello Lippi’s side bottom of their first-round group with a paltry two points.
“It was the darkest and most terrible day in the history of Italian football,” said La Gazzetta’s editorial next to a photo of captain Fabio Cannavaro consoling Fabio Quagliarella.
“I dreamt of closing my eyes and hiding my head in my mamma’s lap — had she been next to me at the stadium — like children do at the movie theatre when the film gets scary,” one op-ed writer said on national daily La Repubblica.
Tutto Sport compared the team to mozzarella cheese, while La Gazzetta said time had caught up with an ageing squad in the end.
— AFP