Marco Rossi: The effort and desire deserve praise

Earlier, Rossi's charges had kept their dreams of UEFA 2020 European Championship qualification alive with their single-goal success. Rossi says much of the team's work should be complimented but that not being able to score a second goal made it very difficult for themselves.

"I felt a lot of pressure during the match because we couldn't score the second goal, even though we could have scored at least four to five times", Rossi began.

"In the last minute, I thought our opponent had equalised and we were very lucky that the referee did not give the goal. We are not the best team, we do not have the best players in the world, but so far in this campaign, we have only played badly away against the Croatians. We responded well to that defeat three days ago and congratulations should go to the players. We started aggressively, we attacked well, we won a lot of possession, our players ran a lot and our opponent could barely make it into our half of the pitch. Unfortunately though, we weren't precise enough in our finishing and we couldn't score a second goal.

We still have much to improve but the effort, the desire, the attitude, all of this deserves praise. In this match, we have seen that no one should be underestimated; Azerbaijan are not easy to beat and they may even score more points in their remaining matches. Finally, I would like to emphasise that the children created a great atmosphere in the stadium and helped the team a lot", the Italian coach concluded.