On September 10, Beijing time, the Group C match of the Euro 2024 Qualifiers was a focus match, and Italy challenged North Macedonia away. In the first half, Inter's Barrera scored a goal and was ruled invalid, and neither side scored; In the second half, Immobile and Baldi scored one goal each. In the end, Italy were forced to draw 1-1 away by North Macedonia.
Italy lost 2-1 to England and Malta 2-0 in the qualifying matches, which had already completed two rounds of qualifying. In this match, Italy welcomed a new manager, Spalletti, who led Napoli to the title in Serie A last season.
It is worth mentioning that the Italian team is ranked 8th in the world, while North Macedonia is 68th, and there is a gap of 60 places between the two teams, and Spalletti will definitely hope to grab 3 points from this "weak team" and boost player morale.
Spalletti's main squad in this game is very interesting, mainly from the Serie A semi-finals Napoli, Lazio, Inter and Roma, AC Milan and Juve did not have any players to start, Inter became the national team contributors, including Barrera, Di Marco and Bastoni.
At the beginning of the game, in the 3rd minute, Barrera received a direct plug from his teammate, and after stopping the ball, calmly pushed the far corner to score, but the referee thought that Barrera received the ball offside and the goal was invalid.
In the 21st minute, Barrera sent a long and precise pass to Tonali, who cut forward to receive the ball to form a single knife, but unfortunately his push hit the upright, and the home team escaped. Both teams scored in the first half and walked into the dressing room to rest 0-0.
In the 47th minute, it was Barrera who won the ball and hit the crossbar, because Mobile received the bounced ball and scored with a header, Italy away 1-0 North Macedonia.
In the 81st minute, North Macedonia won a free kick, Baldi took the penalty, his direct shot was of high quality, the ball flew around the wall into a dead corner, Italy international Donnarumma could only look at the ball and sigh. In the end, the match was over, and Italy was forced to draw 1-1 away by North Macedonia.
At the end of this round, Italy has only 4 points with 1 win, 1 draw and 1 loss, ranking third in the Group C standings, and England, who have played five games, have 13 points, dominating the top of the group standings; Ukraine, who have played four games, have 7 points and are temporarily second in this group. According to the rules, the top two in the group can only qualify for direct promotion, so Italy cannot afford to miss in the next matches, especially against Ukraine, or they are likely to miss next year's European Championship.
After the match, Roma's Christian, who started for Italy, said: "This result is too painful, we are very disappointed and we want to win. But now there is no time, we have to work hard and win next Tuesday [against Ukraine]. ”
It is worth mentioning that although the North Macedonian team is far from the Italian team in terms of book strength, he is the latter's real "nemesis". In last year's Qatar World Cup qualifying European play-off semifinals, Italy was eliminated by North Macedonia in stoppage time, and finally missed the play-offs, missing two consecutive World Cups.