Italy star compares Albania to England after opening victory at Euro 2024
Italy's Federico Chiesa says Albania's fast start in Dortmund gave him flashbacks to facing England in the Euro 2020 final.
Nedim Bajrami pounced on Federico Dimarco's awful throw-in and fired home the fastest goal in European Championships history after just 23 seconds to stun the holders in front of a raucous crowd.
The goal smashed the previous record for the quickest strike at the tournament, the 67 seconds it took for Russia's Dmitri Kirichenko to score against Greece in 2004.
Italy are also responsible for conceding the sixth quickest goal on the list, Luke Shaw's strike at Wembley after one minute and 56 seconds which put England in dreamland in the final three years ago.
That joy wouldn't last for the Three Lions though, with Italy bouncing back to win, and Juventus winger Chiesa - who looked back to his best against Albania after a couple of years of injury troubles - admitted his mind drifted back to Wembley.
“I had some flashbacks of the Euro 2020 final," he said, "but we did the same thing against England and Albania, which was dominating the game."
Bajrami's goal sparked wild scenes amongt the Albania fans
Italy roared back after that sloppy start and were ahead within 15 minutes with the two goals that would ultimately win them the game, with Alessandro Bastoni heading in from Lorenzo Pellegrini's cross and Nicolo Barella firing home from range.
“I think that early goal also shook us up, as we immediately went on the attack and in my view deserved to score a few more goals," said Chiesa.
"We ran a bit of a risk at the end, at this level anything can happen. That is where we need to improve, killing off games that we are dominating.”
Chelsea impressed for Italy against Albania
“We had to kill it off earlier, as anything can happen in Europe. We could’ve had more vertical passes, but the coach wants to keep control of the game. This is a good start really, as people tended to act like we were the underdogs, but we had a great performance and are now up against a wonderful team like Spain.”
Italy will face a confident Spain team in one of the standout games of the group stages in Gelsenkirchen on Thursday night after La Roja swept aside Croatia 3-0 in Berlin earlier on Saturday.
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