A superpower in football, Italy is the heavy favorites to crush a newcomer named Australia who advanced to the next stage despite leading their opponents no more than 5 minutes. Call it luck, I call it Hiddink.
A perennial powerhouse or a newcomer — Powerhouse.
Italy should have no problem dispatching this team although entering this stage for the first time in 32 years gives the Socceroos a lot of confidence in the game.
Will it be enough?
South Korea was not enough for Italy in 2002 but managed to beat them when Hiddink was at their helm. Australia might look good with their coach but a highly defensive team like Italy, Francesco Totti’s dangerous quick scoring abilities, and lessons learned from 2002 against Hiddink should work well in favor of Italy.
As reported by Yahoo: Among the 16,000 or so voters, 45 per cent expected Italy to beat Australia in Kaiserslautern in the afternoon and Switzerland to put paid to Ukraine’s FIFA World Cup™ adventure in the evening game in Cologne.
Among Italian speakers, the result was not surprisingly a landslide, with 95 per cent of voters of the opinion that Marcello Lippi’s side would make it through. Fifty-eight per cent of the same group of voters, including readers from Ticino in Switzerland, cast their votes in favour of Kobi Kuhn’s side joining Italy in the quarter-finals, a similar percentage to the number of votes the Swiss received worldwide.
Particularly interesting were the results from Korean-speaking fans, 79 per cent of whom felt that former Korea Republic coach Guus Hiddink would guide Australia through at the Azzurri’s expense.
Ukraine were also preferred to Switzerland, the team that ended the South Koreans’ FIFA World Cup dream. In a vote of confidence for Oleg Blokhin’s side, 54 per cent voted for Andriy Shevchenko and his team-mates to book their place in the last eight.
I have my cards on Italy to end Australia’s lucky World Cup memories.
Below is the lineup for each teams:
Italy: 1. BUFFON Gianluigi, 3. GROSSO Fabio , 5. CANNAVARO Fabio (C), 7. DEL PIERO Alessandro , 8. GATTUSO Gennaro , 9. TONI Luca , 11. GILARDINO Alberto , 19. ZAMBROTTA Gianluca , 20. PERROTTA Simone , 21. PIRLO Andrea , 23. MATERAZZI Marco
Australia: 1. SCHWARZER Mark, 2. NEILL Lucas, 3. MOORE Craig, 4. CAHILL Tim, 5. CULINA Ja, (C)9. VIDUKA Mark, 13. GRELLA Vince, 14. CHIPPERFIELD Scott, 20. WILKSHIRE Luke, 21. STERJOVSKI Mile, 23. BRESCIANO Marco
Forecast: Italy 2 – Australia 0
[tags]FIFA World Cup, World Cup, FIFA World Cup 2006, Italy, Australia, Knockout[/tags]
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