Azzurri win the stuff of coach's dreams

Italy coach Roberto Menichelli says their opening 4-0 win against Belgium "was the start I dreamed about", leaving opposite number Benny Meurs bemoaning his side's lack of concentration and experience.

'Very happy'
The Azzurri led the UEFA European Futsal Championship Group B curtain-raiser early on through Saad Assis. Belgium responded well and had their share of chances but Assis scored again not long after the break and Luca Ippoliti's penalty and Clayton Baptistella's late strike settled matters. "I'm very happy, it's the start I dreamed about," Menichelli said. "As in all opening games there were difficulties, Belgium are a good team and many of my players are in their first European Championship. We must remember the injuries that hit us, among other things Vinicius Bácaro [with a knee problem] only played thanks to the doctors."

Perfect combination
Baptistella, who made the opening goal for Assis, repeated the trick to make it 2-0 before scoring himself. He told uefa.com: "My role is to provide assists, my finals debut was positive because I made two and I also succeeded in scoring. Saad and me have a perfect understanding, the way we scored the first goal, we did it in Lithuania in qualification and we repeated it today. It was a wonderful goal."

Chances missed
Belgium were playing their first finals game since 2003, and Meurs looked back at the moments that undid his team. "The difference was in concentration, in making the right decisions at the right moment, Italy were much stronger than we were," he said. "Indeed, the game had barely started when they led 1-0. We came back into the game, we had chances and possession, Italy were of course stronger but we were in the game. I thought the second half would give us hope but we conceded two goals quickly. I think Italy made their goals out of a lot of chances, we had our chances too but we didn't score. At this level you need to take your chances, or we don't have a chance against teams like Italy."

Chaibai hope
Defeat against Ukraine on Thursday would end Belgium's campaign, and a draw would leave them hoping for a favour from the Azzurri in the last group game. Meurs admitted that his team are hampered by lacking as strong a league as Italy's, and Karim Chaibai, a Belgium player with experience of top level competition from UEFA Futsal Cup runs with former club Action 21 Charleroi, echoed that. "Unlike the Italian squad, who meet more often, we have very little time to put tactics into place," he said. "The Belgian league is very weak, we only have three or four good teams and today we could tell the lack of experience compared to Italy."