Football
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Giorgio Chiellini: Criticism of Italy after one defeat is 'wrong'

Giorgio Chiellini has appealed for calm ahead of Italy's clash with Spain in the round of 16 at Euro 2016, accusing the Italian media of being too exaggerated in their views.

Italy's leading sports newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport carried the headline "give us our Italy back" after theĀ 1-0 defeat to Republic of Ireland, and this was not to Chiellini's liking.

"If [Lorenzo] Insigne had scored, it would have been 'Grande Italia' instead," Chiellini said at a news conference in Montpellier. "We need balance in our judgements. We were not rubbish who suddenly became phenomenal and are now rubbish again.

"Those who played [against Ireland] did all they could and it's true we made more errors, and if we'd made those against Sweden we would not have won, but to slate the players who had been reserves before is wrong.

"I don't think that you should be conditioned too much by the 90th-minute goal Ireland scored. I was 'great, great, great' against Sweden, but if [Zlatan] Ibrahimovic had scored and not been offside, I'd have been 'idiot, idiot, idiot.' We've been criticised a bit too much after the Ireland game."

The Juventus defender instead hopes for more positive, but nonetheless not exaggerated headlines in the Italian press on Tuesday, the day after Italy face Spain for a place in the quarterfinals.

"It's going to be a great game and it's a pity that it comes so soon, but it will be stimulating," he said. "We're now facing the several-time champions of Europe, a side with great quality and on paper they are almost unbeatable, but I am convinced if we play a game where we show our strengths and limit their strengths as much as we can, we can still achieve something important.

"We are the side who have been running the most, or at least we were going into the second round of games and I don't think it's changed. For a team like ours it's important to keep the intensity and the pressing high because it's important not to concede chances.

"You might not have seen much of our training, but I'm sure you've heard of how hard we've been working and we hope to keep this condition up to July 10. I can assure you that after the 15 minutes you see, our real training starts."

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