Verati: “Italy is used to pressure, the Portuguese are afraid of us”

The Italy national team comes off the Euro 2020 triumph that took them to the top of Europe but reached the final of the World Cup. He’ll have to work up a sweat as he couldn’t get the ticket straight through first place in the group of qualifiers he competed in (Switzerland got it).

If he wants to book a place for Qatar now, he needs to get two wins in a few days: he meets North Macedonia on March 24 and if he prevails, he meets the winner of the Turkish-Portuguese pair on March 29 of the same month for the final battle on the “path” that takes place.

Failure to do so will see the Azzurri ruled out of the finals for the second consecutive year following the 2018 disaster which was eliminated by Sweden in the playoffs, with Marco Verratti indicating he is very optimistic for the playoffs through a press conference, which Kovertsano was granted on Tuesday (22.3.).

“We are expecting two very important games, but we have to be optimistic. We need to have joy and excitement and help each other like we did at the EM.

“We’re used to playing with that pressure, we can’t afford to miss the World Cup final.” The Paris defensive midfielder initially said to add meaningfully:

“Some teammates in my team (ss Paris) are Portuguese and they’re a little afraid of what we did at Euro and that’s why we are. We don’t have happy moments with our team, we have different goals.

I’m sorry about being excluded from Real, but now all we have in mind is Italy and we’re training as best we can because we all want to go to the World Cup

Great defeats, like great victories, always stay in your heart. There is a different climate compared to the game against Sweden 2018, we want to play right now to show our value.

At the last Euro we showed that we are all important. In these games it doesn’t matter who plays, who scores or who assists.

What counts is the whole. “Then it’s up to the coach to make the decisions, who has already shown his ability.”