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TURIN, Italy , Oct 10 (AP) \u2014 European champion Italy bounced back from its first loss in more than three years to beat Belgium 2-1 in the Nations League\u2019s third-place match on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Nicol\u00f2 Barella opened the scoring at the start of the second half and Domenico Berardi doubled Italy\u2019s lead from the spot in the 65th minute.<\/p>\n
Belgium hit the woodwork three times before Charles De Ketelaere netted his first international goal four minutes from time.<\/p>\n
Italy had seen its world record 37-match unbeaten run ended by Spain in Wednesday\u2019s semifinal, with Leonardo Bonucci sent off before halftime in a 2-1 loss. Belgium lost to France on Thursday, after the world champion recovered from two goals down to win 3-2.<\/p>\n
France and Spain meet in the final in Milan later Sunday.<\/p>\n
Both Belgium and Italy made sweeping changes from their semifinal lineups. Romelu Lukaku, Eden Hazard and Thomas Foket had left the Belgium squad after sustaining injuries.<\/p>\n
Italy started aggressively but it was Belgium which went closest to taking the lead when a fierce effort by Alexis Saelemaekers crashed off the crossbar.<\/p>\n
Italy could have broken the deadlock on the stroke of halftime but Thibaut Courtois made a fine save with his feet to push Federico Chiesa\u2019s effort round the post.<\/p>\n
It took the Azzurri less than a minute of the second half to open the scoring when a corner was headed out but only as far as Barella, who volleyed into the bottom left corner.<\/p>\n
It was Barella\u2019s first goal for Italy since scoring in the 2-1 win over Belgium in the Euro 2020 quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
Belgium almost leveled on the hour mark but Michy Batshuayi\u2019s effort came off the crossbar and instead Italy doubled its lead five minutes later when it was awarded a penalty after Timothy Castagne nudged over Chiesa.<\/p>\n
Courtois got a hand to Berardi\u2019s spotkick, but the power took it in anyway.<\/p>\n
Yannick Carrasco hit the right post for Belgium eight minutes from time before it finally got one back.<\/p>\n
An Italian corner was caught by Courtois, whose long throw to Kevin De Bruyne sparked a counterattack. De Bruyne found De Ketelaere and his angled shot went through the legs of Italy goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TURIN, Italy , Oct 10 (AP) \u2014 European champion Italy bounced back from its first loss in more than three years to beat Belgium 2-1 in the Nations League\u2019s third-place match on Sunday. Nicol\u00f2 Barella opened the scoring at the start of the second half and Domenico Berardi doubled Italy\u2019s lead from the spot in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-173885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}