The second period very tight and could have left Italy 2-1 up for the eight minutes, except for a penalty miss by Alex Giorgetti, hitting the crossbar after the halftime siren had sounded.
The evenness of the match flowed into the third period, giving Romania heart at 7-4 with a quarter remaining. The task for Vlad Hagiu’s team proved too much and Aicardi with his third and Pietro Figlioli with his second, took the game to 9-4.
Match 7: 18:50, Group D, ITALY 9 ROMANIA 4
Quarters: 4-1, 1-1, 2-2, 2-0
Referees: Nenad Peris (CRO), Radoslaw Koryzna (POL).
Extra Man: ITA: 4/6. ROU: 0/1
Pens: ITA: 0/1.
Teams:
ITALY:
Stefano Tempesti, Amaurys Perez (2), Niccolo Gitto, Pietro Figlioli
(2), Alex Georgetti, Maurizio Felugo (1), Niccolo Figari, Valentino
Gallo (1), Christian Presciutti (1), Deni Fiorentini, Matteo Aicardi
(3), Christian Napolitano, Marco Del Lungo. Head Coach: Alessandro
Campagna.
ROMANIA: Dragos Stoenescu, Petru Ianc, Tiberiu Negrean (1),
Nicolae Diaconu (1), Daniel Teohari, Andrei Busila, Alexandru Matei
(1), Mihnea Chioveanu (1), Dimitri Goanta, Ramiro Georgescu, Alexandru
Ghiban, Adrei Cretu, Mihai Dragusin. Head Coach: Vlad Hagiu.
FLASH QUOTES:
Deni Fiorentini (ITA):
“It was a difficult start, as every first game of any tournament there are issues that need to be resolved so we had to work through them, but we played good in defence. Playing in defence was a choice, the first thing is the defence, the attack comes second.”
Amaurys Perez:
“I know I have a Spanish passport but I´m always Italian.”
Niccoló Figari (ITA):
“We had a good feeling about today. Our coach won a gold medal here in the Olympics of 1992, so we feel really happy to be here. Also, we were so focused on the game in order to do our best in the championship.”
Andrei Cretu (ROU):
“Our team is new, we have a lot of young players now, so this was always going to be difficult. The other teams in our group are more equal competitors, so we hope if we play better we will come second in our group.”