Italy 1-1 New Zealand
Italy 1-1 New Zealand was a strange kettle of fish. Showing uncommon ambition for a team ranked so lowly, New Zealand had the temerity to take the lead after just 7 minutes. A free kick floated in by Simon Elliot was eventually poked in by Shane Smeltz. There was an overwhelming smell of offside about the goal, but no matter. It took the World Champions until half an hour gone before their equaliser came, and again there was controversy about the goal. This time a ball into the box saw Gilardino go down under challenge. Strangely enough though, he was having his shirt pulled yet still contrived to fall forwards. Mmm... but what can you do eh? Vincenzo Iaquinta stood up to smash the penalty past Paston in the Kiwi goal.
This was an absorbing encounter and this was due in part to New Zealand's lack of fear. The second half produced some fine moments, not least a couple of great saves from Paston, but also a great great chance for West Brom's Chris Wood may well have compounded the embarrassment for Italy late on.
All four teams are amazingly, still in with a chance of qualification from this group and under normal circumstances you'd expect the qualifiers to be Paraguay and Italy. New Zealand need a win against Paraguay and Slovakia need to beat Italy for there to be a chance in the expected order of things. Who knows? As far Italy's poor start to the tournament though, one only has to roll back to 1982 to see them qualify from the first group stage with three draws against Poland Peru and Cameroon, before going on to top the original Group of Death (Italy, Brazil and Argentina) and then beating Poland and West Germany to win the World Cup. Mind you, they had a striker by the name of Paolo Rossi playing for them that time.
