-
Italy's Daniele De Rossi - Source: Reuters -
Related
Italy should be punished for their "notorious theatrics" in today's 1-1 draw with New Zealand at the soccer World Cup in South Africa, former All Whites coach John Adshead says.
New Zealand, ranked 78th in the world, delivered one of the shocks of the tournament in depriving world champions Italy of victory in Nelspruit early this morning (NZT).
The All Whites opened the scoring with a Shane Smeltz goal in the seventh minute, and Italy equalised with a penalty in the 29th taken by Vincenzo Iaquinta.
New Zealand held on as Italy piled on the pressure and had numerous shots at goal. At the final whistle, white-clad supporters in the stands were left shouting for joy while their Italian counterparts sat stunned.
Adshead, who coached the All Whites during the 1982 World Cup, told media the result was wonderful.
"Absolutely incredible, stunning, you can't use enough superlatives to pronounce the end result," he said.
If New Zealand continued to play a tight defence and took the chances that came their way, then the next stage of the tournament was not out of reach, he said.
However, even without considering getting past the group stage, Adshead said the team had outstripped all past achievements by the country in the sport.
"We've played world class teams now, four in the run-up and two
in games, and nobody's embarrassed us. We haven't looked out of
place in this," he said.
Questioned
Italy's penalty, which came about when Tommy Smith was booked for tugging the shirt of Daniele De Rossi, who tumbled in the box, was questioned by the New Zealand camp.
Adshead said while the penalty could not be disputed, the "notorious theatrics" of the European team contributed to it being called.
"The penalty was a penalty, you can't get away from that technically. But I've seen many, many referees not give them. He was fouled a little bit, but you'll see that in midfield quite regularly and you'll never see major things given against the players," Adshead said.
"After watching the game for about 12 minutes, I wrote down, 'The referee is being influenced by the Italian defenders and will give penalty at the first opportunity', and he did.
"If a New Zealand attacker got within three or four metres they were holding their heads and falling down."
Adshead said the drama was nothing new for the side.
"The Italians are past masters of the theatrical. They go down like they've been poleaxed and when you look at it in slow motion they've been touched by a finger or whatever," he said.
"I would love to see these people feigning injury, falling down when nobody's touched them, going down under a banner of seeking to gain an unfair advantage, be punished accordingly, even after the game."
The improvement in goalkeeper Mark Paston since Tuesday's 1-1
draw with Slovakia was of particular note, he said.
Nervy
"Paston was a nervy player in the opening game and it showed, but, today, that was an absolute world-class performance. He didn't make any errors, and dealt with everything that was fired at him," Adshead said.
"Today he did his job superbly. Four world-class saves, three top-class saves - that's a lot in a game of football."
Although fellow goalkeeper Glen Moss would become available for the Paraguay match on Friday, having served out his four-match suspension, Adshead said he saw no reason why coach Ricki Herbert would change the starting line-up.
"I can't believe for one minute that Ricki's even contemplating changing the side at all," he said.
"If Tim Brown's fit he may decide to play Brown instead of (Ivan) Vicelich, but there's nobody in that team today that said, 'I think you'd better give me a rest'."
Meanwhile, Herbert sang his team's praises for coming through against the odds yet again.
"How many times do I have to say it? These boys just keep responding and they've done it again," he said.
Herbert said he did not think the refereeing calls had gone New Zealand's way, labelling them "a little strange".
"We certainly didn't get the fair shake of the dice tonight, that's for sure."
New Zealand next play Paraguay, the only team in Group F to have won a match following their 2-0 victory against Slovakia overnight, at 2am Friday (NZ time) at Polokwane.
