Italy Shows Some Grit Just as the Results Start to Matter

A team that was told to have fun by its coach held its nerve in a tense, extra-time victory over Austria at Euro 2020.

LONDON — The crucial first touch for the opening goal, the one that brought everything that followed into existence, came not from one of the traditional parts of a body used to control a ball — the foot, sometimes the head, maybe the chest — but from something a little more unorthodox. Federico Chiesa had to improvise, so he used his face. A few minutes later, Andrea Belotti created Italy’s second goal while lying on the ground facing the wrong direction, with two Austrian defenders crowding over him and desperately trying to extract the ball from underneath his body. Belotti shuffled and writhed and scrabbled at the turf with his outstretched legs, protecting his possession until help arrived. Neither effort was a case study in refinement. It is not possible, not really, to look elegant when being hit in the nose by a ball, or while squirming around on your back. The goals themselves might have been feats of skill — a fine volley from Chiesa, and then an emphatic finish from Matteo Pessina — but they had been created by more rudimentary virtues: tenacity, courage and unyielding cussedness.