Conte saying, “These games are important because they help the players develop and give the coaches a lot of insight. I am not disappointed at all.  Have we taken a step backwards? I’m not thinking about that. I only care about letting the players gain experience, because they have played so few games on an international stage. The most important thing is to keep working. Defeats can be useful for this.”

On the future, Conte saying “there is a lot of work left to do.”

On the issue of not being a seeded team for July’s World Cup qualifying round draw, Conte adding, “I really don’t understand how Italy can be behind some national teams; it must be because of our form in recent years. I only focus on the present and the future. We have worked a lot in my first year as head coach, but there is still work to do. We have to, and we want to, improve.  Of course it doesn’t please me to lose, but sometimes defeats are part of the learning process. I would be more worried if we had only created one chance in every game we had played, but we had many chances tonight. We just need to be more clinical. There are moments that can change a match, for example, when Bonucci hit the post…”

Conte is already thinking ahead to the future: “I hope we will qualify to the European Championship. We have important games in September against Malta and Bulgaria, and we will prepare for these as usual by working hard.”

Manolo Gabbiadini was somewhat regretful after the match: “If we played like we did in the last few minutes, for the whole game, we might well have won. It’s true, this game was important for our ranking, but matches like this are more useful to gain experience.” He also commented on his missed chance at the end of the game: “I turned quickly, maybe I should have taken it better but it didn’t work out. We have a great group, a good team and we just need experience.  Italy lacks talent? That’s only being said from the outside; we know what we are capable of.”

UEFA President Michel Platini and General Secretary Gianni Infantino attended the game and sat next to FIGC President Carlo Tavecchio. Platini wanted to congratulate Pirlo: “It’s such as pleasure to watch him on the ball.”

It wasn’t the perfect debut for Nicola Sansone: “I’m happy that I made my debut, but I’m sorry that we lost the game. We should have won, we wanted to win, but we couldn’t score. I don’t think that Portugal are better than us. We are sorry about the rankings, but now we need to focus on qualifying for the European Championship. We are a good team and I am confident we will accomplish this.”