{"id":24,"date":"2026-03-26T18:03:52","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T18:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esport.com.ng\/?p=24"},"modified":"2026-03-26T18:03:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T18:03:52","slug":"fifa-world-cup-qualifying-semi-final-live-build-up-to-italy-v-northern-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esport.com.ng\/?p=24","title":{"rendered":"Fifa World Cup Qualifying semi-final LIVE: Build-up to Italy v Northern Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Key Italy midfielder Sando Tonali is expected to be fit, despite missing Newcastle United’s derby loss at home to Sunderland on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Inter Milan defender Alessandro Bastoni remains a doubt, but he played a small role in training, and Gattuso said striker Gianluca Scamacca “is a little further behind”.<\/p>\n

In his press conference, Gattuso – a World Cup winner as a player in 2006 – brought up Northern Ireland’s style of play and said Italy will have to adapt to a “direct approach”.<\/p>\n

In response, O’Neill said “we don’t consider any of that” when it came to setting his team up.<\/p>\n

“They really believe a great deal in what they’re doing, with the second balls and they like to play direct, vertical football,” added Gattuso.<\/p>\n

“They are certainly a team that when they get players into the box, both with crosses and from dead-ball situations, they’re incredible.”<\/p>\n

Gattuso acknowledged the running power and energy of their opponents, but said being direct was “their main skillset” and “where they will cause us the most problems”.<\/p>\n

“I haven’t seen a team that’s necessarily going to be keeping the ball and dragging you out of position in the middle of the park,” he added.<\/p>\n

“They play very direct and everything that they do, they do it in an impressive fashion.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Key Italy midfielder Sando Tonali is expected to be fit, despite missing Newcastle United’s derby loss at home to Sunderland on Sunday. Inter Milan defender […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}