The Azzurrini squad is always quality. There’s a lot of class players just waiting to emerge from the wings that play in these youth championships. Unfortunately, the most recent one is turning out quite poorly for Italy- sort of like the most recent World Cup.

Our  U-19 team is competing in the UEFA U19 Championship right now. There’s not many teams involved in this- only 8, and the tourney begins with 2 groups of 4 teams. Our group is rather tough, being comprised of Italy, Portugal, Croatia, and Spain. We played our first game a few days ago, losing 2-0 to Portugal after going down to 9 men. We tied 0-0 today, after once again going down a man, to Croatia. Which leaves us in a rather precarious position:

Bottom of the group. To advance, we have to beat Spain in the final group game and do it by enough goals so that the other game swings in our favor. That means that Portugal must lose but Croatia has to win by 1 less goal than we win by.

To put it in simpler terms, once again we’re facing elimination from a competition and could well finish bottom of the group. This is turning out to be a rather dour summer for Italia.

Tags: Italy, Summer 2010, U-19 competition, World Cup