On the way to the playoff final, the Portuguese will have to defeat Turkey in the semifinals and the Italians will meet Macedonia.
The draw for the European play-off for the Qatar 2022 World Cup saw Portugal and Italy on the same side of the table, which means that both teams would meet in a hypothetical final and only one could be in Qatar.
There are still three months to go until those games are played, but Italy’s central defender Leonardo Bonucci has already started to heat up that hypothetical confrontation with Portugal.
In an interview with the RAI, the Juventus defender did not miss the opportunity to send a warning to his former teammate Cristiano Ronaldo. “I heard that Cristiano Ronaldo and we were joking about a possible Portugal-Italy. We will see what will happen in the field, but Cristiano knows that he will suffer and receive some blows, “said the experienced center-back. AS from Spain.
On the way to the playoff final, the Portuguese will have to defeat Turkey in the semifinals and the Italians will meet Macedonia.
The semifinals will be played on March 24 and 25, while the hypothetical duel between the Portuguese and Italians would be on the 28 or 29 of the same month.
Italy missed the World Cup in Russia when they lost to Sweden in the play-off. That experience has allowed Italy to know the difficulty that this phase of the classification entails. However, Bonucci is especially motivated because he wants to give his children a special ‘gift’.
“Now we have to concentrate on what is off the pitch, then in March we will meet again and I am convinced that we will learn from what happened in the autumn and we will play two great games. I told my colleagues that the days that separate us from March must always be better. I want to give a gift to my children who have never seen Italy in the World Cup ”, concluded Bonucci. (D)
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