And while the largest teams were absent from the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ due to their failure in the qualifiers, Italy began the campaign to defend its title with an unexpected loss in Naples, in a repeat of the 2020 edition that was held in 2021, where “Squadra Azzurra” won the title with a penalty shootout.
Despite the failure of not qualifying for the World Cup, Roberto Mancini remained a coach and summoned new faces, including Matteo Retigi (23 years old).
And at the “Diego Armando Maradona” stadium in the city of Naples, the “Three Lions” opened the scoring in the 13th minute through West Ham player Declan Rice, who followed into the net a shot from Caen that was blocked by goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma.
Before the end of the first half, the referee awarded a penalty kick to the English following resorting to video technology (VAR), which Kane translated as a goal (44).
With this goal, Kane became the historic top scorer for the England national football team, with 54 international goals.
In the second half of the match, Retigi scored the goal to reduce the difference for Italy (56), his first international goal in his first participation with the Italian national team.
The match witnessed the dismissal of Manchester United player Luke Shaw following receiving two yellow cards within two minutes (78 and 80), but the final result remained in favor of the English.
Ronaldo makes history
The star, Cristiano Ronaldo, the Saudi Al-Nasr professional, led the Portuguese national team to a strong start at the beginning of its qualifiers campaign for Euro 2024, as it defeated its guest Liechtenstein by 4-0.
Portugal’s goals were scored by Joao Cancelo (8), Bernardo Silva (47) and Cristiano Ronaldo (51 from a penalty kick and 63).
Thus, the Portuguese national team scored its first three points in Group X, which also witnessed today the victory of Bosnia and Herzegovina over its Icelandic counterpart 3-0, and Slovakia tied with Luxembourg without goals.
Ronaldo raised his score to 120 goals, reinforcing his record for the number of international goals, in the match in which he alone held the world record for the number of international matches (197).
As for Group H, Denmark beat Finland 3-1, while Kazakhstan lost to Slovenia 1-2, and San Marino lost to Northern Ireland 0-2.