Heroic Paraguayan match or perfect Italian calculation? The first stage of the World Cup was closed by the storm given by the brazzurri surprising defeat vs the South American selection (though we have to underline that the same kind of "suspects" were observed in the Argentina and Ukraine matches). Real or fake match (everybody can watch the match and decide on his own) the fact is that the Italy vs Portugal fight is still active after almost 10 years of bad relations, started with the "Franca" affair of Pacos De Ferreira, which determined the Italian exclusion from the Guatemala 2000 World Cup. The Portuguese reaction to the Paraguayan victory (first of futsal history over Italy, but this is just a mere statistics) by 2-4 was quite disgusted, as the main local portals were talking about a scheduled "conspiracy" organised by the Italian staff in order to put Portugal out and avoid an harder group with Russia, Spain and Argentina. The Portuguese charges were clear, as proved by the articles published on Futsal.com (click here) and Futsal Portugal (click here), just to mention two of them. Also, the Portuguese national team press officer Felipe Felix, in declarations to Pasion Futsal Magazine, expressed his opinion: click here to have a look. On the other hand is also true that Portugal lost to Italy and was therefore in the italian hands in the final day, something to avoid if you want to qualify for the next round. As Javier Lozano correctly told in an interview with Futsal Portugal, nothing can be proved. On our side, we can just hope in better relations between Italian and Portuguese futsal, as well as to attend real matches in future (if fake matches were played in Brazil).

Fair Play, please (it shouldn't be just a slogan, right?).




Posted by Luca Ranocchiari --> luca.ranocchiari@futsalplanet.com