Italy, current champion of the Euro Cup, played its first match against Albania and although it started losing, it had no problems coming back in a short time and starting its title defense on the right foot.
The match began with quite a surprise after, in one minute of play, Albania managed to take advantage of a defensive error by Italy, who wanted to play from the wing in their own goal and ended up giving the ball away. Nedim Bajrami took advantage of that and created madness at the Signal Iduna Park.
From there, the Italians began their comeback mission and although there were a few minutes of suffering, finally, the pressure was effective, achieving the goal 16 minutes into the first half.
Italy’s stoppage time came in the 11th minute when Alessandro Bastoni pounced and headed a brilliant cross past Albania goalkeeper Strakosha, who barely saw it go over.
That tie meant a new breath for Italy and at 16 minutes Nicolo Barella managed to get to the ball and on the edge of the area he did not hesitate to finish first. The finish was good and he entered close to the left post to score the second.
For the complement, a more dangerous Italy was expected, but Albania closed the spaces well and had several changes to try with counterattacks to take advantage of the spaces and needs of the current champions.
Despite this, the match came at a time when there were too many fouls and Albania received several warnings, while Italy gave way to other players, who had the objective of scoring a third goal.
The minutes passed and although Italy never again had problems against Albania, they were unable to come up with dangerous plays, so the score stopped at 2-1.
Finally, Albania was not able to defeat the champions and Italy managed to add three points, remaining leaders along with Spain, which beat Croatia 3-0 in the first round.
