The Italy Under-21 player Stefano Sturaro has appeared to refer to Sweden and Portugal players as “dogs” after the two countries drew 1-1 to progress to the semi-finals at the European Under-21 Championship.
A win for either the Swedes or the Portuguese would have seen Italy, 3-1 winners over England in their final group game, reach the semi-finals. In the end, Luigi Di Biagio’s team finished level on points with the Swedes but are on their way home because of their head-to-head record against the Scandinavians (they lost their game 2-1).
To make matters worse, Sturaro was suspended for the game with England after being sent off against Sweden for slapping Mikael Ishak in the face. On Tuesday night, after Sweden had equalised against Portugal in the 89th minute, Sturaro tweeted: “Dogs celebrate on the corpses of lions, thinking they’ve won, but lions remain lions and dogs stay dogs.” By Wednesday morning it has been retweeted more than 800 times.
It is not the first time Italy have been eliminated after a Sweden draw in the last group game of a final tournament. In 2004, Sweden and Denmark drew 2-2 in their final group match – the scoreline required to eliminate Italy, with the two Scandinavian countries advancing. At the time, Milan’s vice president, Adriano Galliani, said: “We got as many points as the players who are blond and beautiful. But we are darker and not as beautiful.”
"Sui cadaveri dei leoni festeggiano i cani credendo di aver vinto, ma i leoni rimangono leoni e i cani rimangono cani"
— stefano sturaro (@sturaro_stefano) June 24, 2015
On Tuesday night La Gazzetta dello Sport published an article saying that Sweden are at risk of becoming “the masters of fixing games”, and that the result had the distinct smell of a “biscotto”, the Italian term for a result that has been agreed beforehand.
It continued: “Even allowing a presumption of innocence, the impression this evening is that our Under-21s were eliminated by the most preannounced of biscotti: ‘little’ Sweden sent a very good Italy team home, with the complicity of Portugal [who finished top of the group].”
The newspaper ends the article by asking: should Uefa not at least be monitoring these situations?”
