The Hindu : Sport / Football : Swift Swedes set to take on staunch Italian defence

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Friday, Jun 18, 2004

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Sport - Football

Swift Swedes set to take on staunch Italian defence

LISBON, JUNE 17. Italy will be without star playmaker Francesco Totti when it faces Sweden on Friday. Totti received a three-match ban from UEFA on Thursday for spitting in the face of Danish midfielder Christian Poulsen in the team's Euro 2004 opener.

Italy has 24 hours to appeal the decision. It was unclear if Totti would be allowed to play on Friday.

"Now we have to see whether the Italians will appeal. A decision must be taken whether the appeal will have a delaying effect," UEFA spokesman Rob Faulkner told the Associated Press.

If Italy appeals and the ban is confirmed by UEFA's appeals committee, Totti will miss Italy's remaining Group `C' games against Sweden and Bulgaria and the quarterfinals, if the Italians qualify. The prosecutor's had asked for a four-match suspension.

A Danish TV station showed footage on Wednesday of Totti spitting in the face of Poulsen. Italy argued that Totti was provoked by Poulsen and used several different angles of TV footage to support its claims.

But on Friday an even bigger problem for the `Azzurri' could be Sweden's three strikers. Henrik Larsson scored twice and Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Marcus Allback added one each as Sweden beat Bulgaria in its opening Group `C' match. Italy, meanwhile, looked lacklustre in a goalless draw with Denmark on Monday.

Totti's suspension will now force coach Giovanni Trapattoni to radically alter his attack. Trapattoni will probably move Alessandro Del Piero into Totti's playmaker role and add 21-year-old Antonio Cassano as a striker alongside Christian Vieri.

Meanwhile, Sweden's forward line is all set, led by Ibrahimovic and Larsson with Allback a possible option off the bench.

"It played a good game against Bulgaria," Italy forward Christian Vieri said on Wednesday. "Larsson is a great player. It is great in attack, it is well organised and has a solid defence. We're going to have to run more and play harder than in the first game."

And the Italians feel they need to win to stand a realistic chance of advancing into the quarterfinals.

"I don't know the names of the defenders, but we watched them against Bulgaria and we're going to have to prepare well to beat them," Vieri said.

Sweden co-coach Tommy Soderberg said it was understandable that the Swedish players were little known. "If you ask Italy about Swedish players, they will mention four or five players. If you ask Sweden about Italian players, they will list 33 players. It's one of the best teams today and remains one of the favourites," he said.

As a goalkeeper, Buffon has to know who he is facing. "I've known Larsson a long time and Ibrahimovic is showing how good he is. I should worry about them, but it's the same for them, since Italy has two great defenders like (Alessandro) Nesta and (Fabio) Cannavaro," he said.

Swedish midfielder Mikael Nilsson, who will likely play right-back with Teddy Lucic out injured, said his team was not expecting a repeat of the Bulgaria match.

"Zero-zero would be a good result for us, a draw would be good," he said. "Five-zero was a big score, we played well but maybe it was one or two goals more than we should have gotten," Nilsson said. "The Italians are much better in defence than Bulgaria was."

Bulgaria to draw on

spirit of '94

At Braga, Bulgaria will approach its clash against Denmark hoping to kick-start its Euro 2004 campaign by drawing on its experience at the 1994 World Cup.

In the United States a decade ago, Bulgaria slipped up badly against Nigeria in its opening match before fighting back to make it through to the semifinals. It will need to reproduce a similar recovery act to avoid an early flight back to Sofia.

Striker Dimitar Berbatov told AFP, "we were beaten 3-0 by Nigeria in our first match at the '94 World Cup, and then made it through to the last four. We'll just have to do the same thing again!"

No one in the Bulgarian camp is kidding themselves that the road ahead is anything but rocky, especially with Denmark emerging the moral victor in its goalless draw against Italy.

"I saw Denmark's game, it's very good and should win," said Berbatov. "But my team is ready to move on and forget what happened in the first game."

The Bayer Leverkusen attacker disclosed the team had held a soul-searching session to try and determine what precisely went wrong in Guimareas to produce such a wretched scoreline.

"We all sat down and discussed in turn our faults, the mistakes we made in that awful match, and our strengths. There's pressure on us, we don't like being the only team to have been beaten 5-0," he said.

Denmark has been boosted by the return of Chelsea's Jesper Gronkjaer, who has rejoined the team after the death of his mother.

Coach Morten Olsen now has a full squad to pick from as Everton midfielder Thomas Graveson is also back in the frame after being banned for the Italy match. — AP

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