Fabio Cannavaro pleased with Italy's character

10 April 2012

Italy captain Fabio Cannavaro lamented his side's failure to take three points against Paraguay but praised their character in coming from behind to draw 1-1.

Having played well in the first half of their World Cup opener last night, the 2006 winners were shocked when Paraguay defender Antolin Alcaraz rose to head home a 39th-minute free-kick.

Italy's blushes were spared to some extent, however, as Daniele De Rossi slid in to punish a mistake by Paraguay goalkeeper Justo Villar after 63 minutes and take a 1-1 draw in the Group F opener at Cape Town's Green Point Stadium.

"We're not very happy about the result of the match," said Cannavaro, who lifted the trophy four years ago. "Paraguay are a good team but they didn't play very well because they were quite defensive.

"We had many chances to score the second goal and Paraguay managed to stop us. That kind of thing can happen in the World Cup.

"Our second-half performance was very good because we scored one and when you are losing, that is not easy psychologically. We played good football in the second half."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in