Gattuso warning for Italy: ‘Bosnia have very experienced players’
Gennaro Gattuso gives his first comment after learning Italy will face Bosnia and Herzegovina in the World Cup play-off final. ‘There are a lot of experienced players, Wales are very different.’
The Azzurri were forced to wait for quite a while after their 2-0 victory over Northern Ireland, as Edin Dzeko cancelled out the Welsh opener in Cardiff and forced extra time.
It remained 1-1 after 120 minutes and they could only be separated in a penalty shoot-out.
The final for a spot in the World Cup will be at the Bilino Polje stadium in Zenica on Tuesday March 31.
Gattuso preparing Italy for Bosnia trip
“It’s going to be a fiery atmosphere, though if we had gone to Cardiff, it would’ve been a similar situation,” said Gattuso in his press conference.
“There are a lot of experienced players in the Bosnia team, Wales are very different. Bosnia close up well, rely on their strikers, so it’ll be another very difficult game, much like the one we had tonight.”
It took until the 56th minute for Italy to break Northern Ireland down with a Sandro Tonali strike from the edge of the area, then the Newcastle United midfielder set up Moise Kean for the second.
Did the Azzurri feel the pressure of being the favourites a bit too much?
“Aside from the pressure, we also made a mistake in the first half with Locatelli sitting too deep, we ended up with Mancini acting as a full-back, which was not what we had prepared at all,” confessed Gattuso.
“We needed to bring their midfielders forward and look for our strikers, but instead we kept passing it down the right for Politano to take his man on, occasionally on the left, but not enough.
“Northern Ireland surprised us too, as we expected them to be far more vertical, but they did try to pass it around. After 15-20 minutes, we realised that and moved better. Our mentality and our tactics in the first half were not what we wanted.”
The tension was palpable on the touchline, but Gattuso assured he tried to keep his usually abrasive manner under wraps.
“If you noticed, I was very calm in the first half. I was angry too, because for long spells we didn’t do what we had prepared. I explained we needed to go for the strikers and not sit so deep. We did much better after the restart, I realise these are games where you feel the tension and what is at stake,” continued the coach.
“The decision to come here in a smaller stadium was also wise, because if we’d been in a bigger place with 70,000 in the stands, trust me that a good 30 per cent would’ve started jeering at half-time. Instead, we did well to pick Bergamo, the fans helped us and they were fundamental in not putting more pressure on my players.”
Alessandro Bastoni had been a major doubt due to an ankle injury and he was the first player substituted soon after receiving a yellow card.
“I’ll be honest, Bastoni had been out for nearly three weeks and not even training in that time. He was booked, I preferred to not take any more risks, but the others are to be relied upon. Only Scamacca is carrying a knock, but he should be there too in the second game.
“In other situations, Bastoni would 99 per cent not have been risked from the start today. Now we’ve got to try to recover as quickly as possible and do as little damage as possible.”