Match #58, Quarter-Finals: Italy vs. Ukraine
Italy 3-0 Ukraine
(Gianluca Zambrotta 6, Luca Toni 59, 69)
Man of the Match: Gennaro Gattuso (Italy)
Yellow Cards: Vyacheslav Sviderskyi, Maksym Kalinichenko, Artem Milevskiy (Ukraine)
Referee: Frank de Bleeckere (Belgium)
Attendance: 50,000 (Hamburg)
1-0: In midfield, Totti takes advantage of a sliding Ukrainian player and passes to Zambrotta. He goes off to the races, beating his man and heading to the edge of the box; from there, he shoots into the bottom-right corner, just out of Shovkovskyi’s reach.
2-0: Off a short corner, Totti brings the ball to the left edge of the box and whips a cross in; the ball finds Toni and he freezes Shovkovskyi with a solid header to the left side.
3-0: Zambrotta manages to get by two Ukrainian players in the left of the box and draws Shovkovskyi out, then slides and manages to make the pass to Toni, who just has to tap the ball into the open net.
Thoughts: It was almost guaranteed that one of these two teams would step things up in this match, but nobody knew who would do so. Italy had a lot to prove after just escaping from the Australia match, while Ukraine bored the daylights out of everyone in the game against Switzerland. Ukraine tried today, but they were absolutely no match for Italy when the day was done. The Italians simply managed to connect on their chances, and Ukraine either were hitting balls off the crossbar or into the reach of the spectacular Buffon. Yet again, Ukraine put all their hopes on Shevchenko and Italy managed to shut him down; he had an extremely disappointing tournament by his standards and this was the icing on the cake. To Ukraine’s credit, they still fought even when they were down 2-0, but that third goal took all the fight out of them. Unlike the last game each of these teams played, there was a deserved winner and a deserved loser in this one.
Ukraine can’t feel too bad about making it this far in their first appearance, even if they were outmatched by Spain and snuck into the QF’s by beating Switzerland in the shootout. It’s not the most impressive way to make it into the last eight but there’s hope for the future, and they gave their fans a good present by going this far. Italy needed a good performance after the Australia game, and certainly silenced their critics tonight; three goals, solid defense and no cards. The game against Germany is going to be extremely interesting because the last time these sides met in March, Italy handed Germany a stunning 4-1 defeat. I have a feeling things aren’t going to be as one-sided on Tuesday.