Sports

De Rossi´s goal saves Italy in match with underdog Paraguay
by Zuzana Zelenakova

World champions from Italy had some tough time during their Group F encounter with Paraguay. 1-1 match at the Green Point Stadium in Cape Town saw South America´s team, generally considered an underdog in the tournament, putting some serious resistance to four-time Italian champions. Although the second most successful team in World Cup history, with first being Brazil, played good, balanced football, it failed to break through Paraguayan defence in the first half. There was one attempt by Vincenzo Iaquinta, however, the shot wasn´t strong enough to escape the Paraguayan goalkeeper Justo Villar. On the other hand, Paraguayan players kept Italians busy with their ! constant attacks. The effort and concentration that South America´s team put into the game paid off in the 38th minute when Antolin Alcarez scored the first goal of the match. The first half ended with smiles on Paraguayan players´ faces. The spirits of Italian team probably further sank after the goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon had to be replaced at half-time by Federico Marchetti. “Buffon had a problem in his back. He had backache during the warm-up, but he wanted to go ahead and play. He said he couldn’t continue at half-time, however, which was a bad blow for us. We not only lost a keeper, but it meant we had one less substitute for the second half, something we could have used,“ said coach Marcello Lippi. Team physician Enrico Castellacci didn´t want to make any prognosis before performing series of tests. Buffon has five days to recover before the next match with New Zealand scheduled for Sunday. Despite all this, Italian managed to score ! too. Daniel de Rossi equalized in the 62nd minute thanks to Vi! llar 0;s mistake. In his attempt to stop a corner from Simone Pepe he failed to get the ball and left the net unguarded.

related story (sgx17574): http://www.france24.com/en/20100614-paraguay-hold-title-hold...

by Zuzana Zelenakova for Cantell TV (http://cantell.tv)

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posted by Blog TechSource @ 4:01 PM