“We were very committed but the pitch wasn’t great and didn’t help us. We are working hard and have to continue on the same path. I liked the way my players applied themselves, they showed a lot of determination and a will to win. There is still work to do and we know that we have a tough road ahead of us. It is important that we acknowledge that,” said Conte following his team’s 1-0 win against Scotland, who are ranked 40th in the FIFA World Ranking, however they were able to beat the Czech Republic and Denmark in their last two matches. There was a number of questions for the Italian coach following the match: “Will my team be ready for the first game against Belgium? I cannot see into the future but we can take many positives, for example, we didn’t concede or even allow them a shot on target. We also finally managed to get back to winning ways. Will I sleep easily after a match like this? I always struggle to sleep after matches like this because of the adrenaline. How will De Rossi pull up after his performance? We will have to see…”

Graziano Pellè scored the winner and his fifth goal for the Azzurri: “I’m happy, I must be lucky in Malta. The team? We have a lot of room for improvement, we are working a lot on both a tactical and physical level and we know what our aims are that we want to reach. However, words don’t matter anymore we have to prove ourselves.  We will try to start the European Championship as well as we can. We don’t like to make excuses but in these next few days we will continue to work hard. We are just missing that little bit of brilliance. We can definitely play better. We have the right mentality and want to stay positive; once we find that bit of brilliance we will be ready. This friendly was an important part of our preparation and we must keep on training to put ourselves in the best possible position to do well.”

Darmian is on the same page: “It was a week of hard work, we didn’t play as well as we know we can and can improve. We will prepare as well as we can to be ready for the European Championship. There is a lot of room for improvement. We are a close-knit group but we still have to keep our cool and work hard. When we go out onto the pitch we have to give 100 percent, if we do that we will have the quality to record some good results. Our strengths? We will show them on the pitch. We will have to continue to work hard during the week to make sure that we are prepared.