A friendly between Italy and Spain’s Under-17s took place today at the ‘Tre Fontane’ in Rome today, and ended in a 1-0 victory to the visitors. The game was decided by a penalty awarded at the end of the first half and converted by Luis Carbonell after Giorgio Scalvini committed a foul in the area. The Real Saragoza youth product made no mistake from the spot. The Azzurrini had a good chance to equaliser just a few minutes later as Daniele Ghilardi connected with Federico Zuccon’s free-kick but Jus Rubio managed to clear his effort off the line.

Both teams made changes at the break but the rhythm of the game remained the same: Spain continued to boss the game and Carmine Nunziata’s team couldn’t get an equaliser. The Azzurrini Coach gave his thoughts at the end of the match: “Beyond the result, and it could’ve been worse, what interested me the most was our response and unfortunately it wasn’t positive. We didn’t play with rhythm, we played with low intensity and against like teams you can’t afford to be like that: they have technique, dribbling ability and physicality: our guys were too passive.”

The Azzurrini have one last training camp at the Federal Training Centre before leaving for Poland in Match where they will compete in the Elite Stage of European qualification; they will take on the hosts, Montenegro and Wales. Nunziata elaborated further on the preparation for these games: “We will have the opportunity to develop many aspects in Coverciano. In Europe all the games are difficult because the teams all have technique, play with a pace and you have to be at your best to beat them. This defeat will serve as a lesson to us especially in telling us to increase the intensity and some mechanisms in our game: qualification is within our teach but we definitely need to improve.”