Spain 1 – 1 Italy

The real team news for this game was that Spain started the game with no recognised striker on the pitch playing with 6 midfielders, David Silva and Fabregas playing further forward.

Spain started the first half on top playing their attractive style of football nocking the ball around well but Casillas was the busiest of the keepers. Spain dominated possession but you could tell that they didn’t have a recognised striker on the pitch because in general there was a real lack of a finished product.

Around the 53 minute mark Mario Balotelli does really well to win the ball of Sergio Ramos he is then one on one with the keeper with Pique marking a ball to the centre, but he dawdles on the ball giving Ramos a chance to get back at him and deny him the goal scoring opportunity.

Balotelli was then replaced 2 minutes later, after his lazy approach to making an attempt on goal, by Antonio Di Natale. Di Natale, who currently plays for Udinese, scores a fantastic goal after being on the pitch for just 4 minutes.

Just 2 and half minutes later Cesc Fabregas makes a diagonal run across goal and is found brilliantly by Silva and he pokes home Spain’s first goal of the tournament. The goal then prompted Spain coach Vincente Del Bosque to make a change bringing Jesus Navas on for David Silva to give the current world champions more width.

Spain brought on a striker at the 75th minute mark with Fernando Torres replacing the goal scorer Fabregas and Torres within seconds of coming on found himself 1 on 1 Buffon who does really well to tackle the Spaniard to prevent a goal.

Spain had the best of the chances in the last 10 minutes of the game with Torres missing a few golden opportunities for his country, story of his season really. The game peters out toward the end and finished 1 – 1 with Italy shutting up shop and playing for the draw.

The referee was Viktor Kassai from hungary and he had a fairly decent game, dealing with the like of Balotelli is never an easy challenge, he was however a bit card happy though with a total of 7 yellow card handed out in a relatively clean match.