By Daily Sports on November 13, 2021

Jorginho's last-minute penalty miss ensured the race to finish first in 2022 World Cup qualifying Group C goes down to the wire as top two Switzerland and Italy played out a gripping draw.

Giovanni Di Lorenzo headed Italy level after Silvan Widmer's superb opener.

The Azzurri hold the edge going in to the last round of games with a goal difference two better than the Swiss.

It means a straight shoot-out between the pair for top spot on Monday, with Italy at Northern Ireland and Switzerland at home against Bulgaria.

The prospect of a play-off spot will evoke unpleasant memories for Italy, who missed out on the World Cup in 2018 when they were beaten over two legs by Sweden.

Switzerland also ended up in the play-offs four years ago, but beat Northern Ireland to make it to the finals in Russia.

High drama on entertaining night in Rome

What a rollercoaster ride for both countries.

In the space of a few final minutes in Rome, Switzerland were swung from feeling disappointed at the prospect of an otherwise superb draw at the home of the European champions to ecstatic at still being firmly in the race for automatic qualification for the finals in Qatar.

Meanwhile, Italy will have gone from joyous at being handed the opportunity to claim an iron grip on the group to floored at spurning the chance with a tricky trip to Northern Ireland still to come.

In truth, though, this was just an extreme microcosm of a superb see-saw game, that saw the Swiss charge out of the blocks and take a deserved lead before Italy rallied to claim the point their performance merited.

Widmer's opener was a belter, fired into the net from range after Noah Okafor had sped away on the break before calmly setting him up. It came in the middle of a 20-minute period in which the visitors provoked repeated panic in a usually unflappable Italian defence.

Roberto Mancini's side are nothing if not resilient - as evidenced by their only recently ended world record unbeaten run of 37 games - and they dug deep to steady the ship before wrestling back control.

Di Lorenzo's header amongst a sea of bodies from a well-taken free-kick restored parity and set up a second half that was less frantic but edged on chances by the home side, the best of which saw Yann Sommer save a deflected Lorenzo Insigne shot with his legs.

The best chance, though, was Jorginho's, but to the agony of every Italian in the Stadio Olimpico his technique and composure let him down at the crucial moment. (BBC)

•PHOTO: Jorginho misses from the penalty penalty spot

Source Daily Sports

Posted November 13, 2021

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