Giorgio Chiellini was the first Italy player to speak after the defeat against North Macedonia: “It is tough to explain this result. We played a good game, and we just needed to score. We were not presumptuous, although we lacked something. We started making mistakes in September and paid the price for them. We had several chances. They were compact in the final third, and we did not manage to find the decisive play. I can not blame the group in terms of attitude.”
“We are disappointed and distraught. This elimination opens up a great void inside of us. I hope there will be the right energies to re-start in the future, as it happened in the past. I wish Roberto Mancini will stay on the bench, as he is indispensable to the national team. I am proud of my teammates. Now it is not the time to talk about whether this was my last game with the Azzurri.”
Jorginho also spoke to Rai after Italy-North Macedonia: “It hurts to think about the penalty kicks I missed in the qualifiers. Not being able to help my teammates and make my country happy will haunt me forever. It is cliché to say that we have to move forward, but it is painful to lose like this.”
“Unfortunately, we have not been able to score as much as we should have in the last few matches. My mistakes were part of the problem. It is a difficult moment because we have to face reality. We played well at times, and won a lot, including the Euro, but we did not perform as we are capable of in recent games. A series of little errors made the difference. We should not have conceded in this one.”