Euro 2012 news: Italy thrash Faroe Islands 5-0
Italy were scheduled to take on the Faroe Islands in both the teams second match of the qualifying campaign to the Euro 2012. Italy were on the back of a win over Estonia from their opening game.
Italy were by far the favourites going into the game, however the team's new manager Cesare Prandelli felt that the team’s opening performance was not up to the standards that he expects from his players, which is why he reshuffled the team and kept only five of the players who fielded the pitch against Estonia.
The game was scheduled to take place in the Artemio Franchi stadium which was the manager’s former stadium of employment. Earlier, he used to work at the stadium day in and day out managing Fiorentina who call the Artemio Franchi stadium their home ground, which only meant that the match meant much more to the manager than he had initially claimed.
The match was going to be adjudicated by head official Alexey Kulbakov, who wasted not time in signaling the start of the match.
The match got underway to a noisy Italian crowd who were making the referee's whistle almost inaudible at times.
However as predicted earlier it was Italy who were on top of things from the opening seconds of the match, the team started to get hold of the ball better and were passing it around dangerously. This movement by the former World Champions eventually led to the first goal of the game, which came in the eleventh minute thanks to Alberto Gilardino the veteran striker.
Italy never looked back from that moment on and by the half hour mark, they were three goals up. The second goal came in the twenty second minute and was scored by Daniele De Rossi. The third was scored by Antonio Cassano who had been superb, in the opening game against Estonia and seemed to carry his good form into this game as well, as he easily converted an opportunity on the twenty seventh minute.
The home fans were hoping for more goals as the match progressed but, those three were enough to see the first half come to an end.
The second half picked up in a very similar fashion to the first, the only difference being that this time around Italy did not manage to get on the score sheet almost immediately and were finally being given a challande by the Faroe Islands who were looking to retain some possession of the ball.
In the eightieth minute, Fabio Quagliarella decided to join in the goal scoring party as he scored his first and Italy’s fourth goal of the game and in doing so he killed the glimpses of hope that the Faroe Islands were being shown.
In the ninetieth minute Italy's master play maker, Andrea Pirlo put the final nail in the coffin as he scored the team’s fifth goal and finally put the game to rest.
The game ended with the Faroe Islands being thrashed by Italy who put five superb goals past them. This win acted as giant morale booster for the Italians and their new manager as the team finally started to look like it might just go all the way in the Euro campaign. The most notable fact about the game was that Italy had twenty five shots at goal as compared to the Faroe Islands three. This could only mean that the era of boring Italian football might have finally come to an end, as the new manager looks to introduce some spark in to the team that has bored spectators to death over the past.
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