Defending champions and one of the sides that was highly likely to win this year’s World Cup, has crashed out the tournament. Italy was shown the door by Slovakia, who displayed tremendous composure and skills to beat the defending champions. The Slovakians, who were younger, faster and more determined deserved to win and they did, that too in style. Although Italy did find its touch during the last stages of the game and came pretty close to drawing level with Slovakia, it wasn’t good enough.

It wasn’t this match only that ensured that Italy will not move any further in the tournament. In fact, their game against New Zealand was the defining moment. New Zealand is by no means even a decent side and the way Italy struggled against them, gave sure signs to the fans that Italy wasn’t going to do too well this time round.

It is not that Italy was totally outplayed by the Slovakians. They had their opportunities but somehow could not take advantage of some wonderful goal scoring positions. It is very disappointing to see great sides go down the way Italy did. But I guess the team never played as a unit and when a side is unable to convert the chances into goals, it becomes very difficult to win matches. It wasn’t just the strikers’ inability to goal, even the defense that is known to be the best in the world could not live up to the expectations.