Conte highlights threat of Belgium and Ibrahimović
Saturday, December 12, 2015
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Group E is in contention for the 'Group of death' tag but Antonio Conte reckons Belgium – plus a certain Mr Ibrahimović – will prove the greatest obstacles to Italy.
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Belgium, Sweden and the Republic of Ireland complete a formidable-looking set of opponents for Italy, and Antonio Conte needs no introduction to the threat posed by Zlatan Ibrahimović and a Belgium side that beat the Azzurri 3-1 last month.
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Antonio Conte, Italy coach
It is a pretty interesting group. I think Belgium are an excellent team and are among the favourites to reach the final stages. They have a young team and a lot of top players in their ranks. We also just played them in a friendly match.
Well, Belgium, as I said before, have a lot of strong and top players – I'm thinking about Hazard, Lukaku, De Bruyne and Nainggolan, just to name a few. Sweden have a top player in Ibrahimović and everything revolves around him. And Ireland play with a lot of emotion and have a strong team spirit, so we have to be careful.
We are ambitious but we know we have to work hard and that we can improve a lot. We want to do our best and not to set ourselves any limits.