Ventura: I didn’t want to change De Rossi at all, that was the biggest fake news in the past 50 years

Hupu News on October 15th: Former Italian national team coach Giampiero Ventura served as a guest on the "Il Processoal 90'" TV program and talked about the 2018 World Cup play-off match between Italy and Sweden.

At that time, Italy was in urgent need of goals. Midfielder De Rossi rejected the coaching staff's warm-up request and pointed to Insigne, saying that it was more necessary to replace the striker at this moment. Ventura clarified the matter.

"That was the biggest fake news in the history of Italian football in the past 50 years. I had no intention of letting De Rossi play at all. It was just that the fitness coach was warming up the players in order to prevent them from being replaced immediately when needed. The parties involved are obviously still alive. You can ask them."

"This incident just illustrates the difficulty of the internal environment of the team at that time, because it was completely It was fabricated out of nothing. I never scheduled De Rossi to play in that game, I was just called up to warm up when it was his turn. I didn't even see that scene at the time. I only saw it for the first time when the media replayed it a few days later. So it is really an incredible fake news, but it also proves that anything can be twisted into something negative and used to smear it."