Italy coach Cesare Prandelli has put the pressure squarely on Spain and Germany ahead of the 2012 European Championship semifinals claiming they are favourites to progress to the decider.
Prandelli’s Azzurri reached the semifinals where they will take on Germany after a 4-2 penalty shootout victory over England after a goalless draw in Kiev on Sunday evening.
“Germany and Spain are favourites here. We’ll need everyone fit and fresh; we’re going to go for it,” Prandelli told reporters after the spotkicks victory.
“They’re always attacking games against Germany. Germany are a great side – they made changes against Greece and it made no difference.”
Prandelli was delighted with his side’s performance against England, where they controlled the majority of possession but couldn’t turn that into goals. The Italy boss did admit he feared they may be punished on the counter.
“I knew we could control the game. My worry was that we were allowing England too much space on the break – we could have been a bit cleverer in our build-up play,” he said.
“We tried to play football. We tried to draw England out; we tried to hit them quickly. I think if we’d scored in the 90 minutes it would have been an even better game.”