Leonardo Bonucci has said that comments of 'It's coming home' motivated the Italian football team to prove presumptuous England fans wrong.
Bonucci put in a man of the match performance on Sunday evening, and confirmed that the lyrics David Baddiel and Frank Skinner's song, ubiquitous since Russia 2018, made his team want to put things right.
Bonucci on 'It's coming home'
"Absolutely. We heard it day in, day out ever since Wednesday night since the Denmark game that the cup would be coming home to London.
"Sorry for them but actually the cup will be taking a nice flight to Rome and that way Italians all over the world can savour this competition.
"It is for everyone, we said from day one it was for them and for us."
I was saying Boo-nucci
Bonucci also said that the boos during the Italian national anthem were another motivating factor.
"We were strong, louder than the noise of the whistles," Bonucci said.
"During the warm-up I said to all my team-mates: let's plug our ears and play as we know how.
"This team hasn't lost in 34 games, we are a fantastic team. It is an absurd enjoyment... we are having fun with this."
Meanwhile, Gareth Southgate defended his side's performance against Italy.
'We're playing against a very good side. We got off to the perfect start. Maybe dropped a little bit too deep.
'Sometimes when you score that early it's easy to try and soak up the pressure and try hold onto that and that's probably what happened. They had a lot of the ball, they had a lot of possession but to be fair we looked fairly in control.
'We didn't create too many chances then obviously they got their breakthrough from the set-piece and then after that it was probably a 50/50."
Southgate's focus is now continuing the side's progress.
'In extra-time we grew into the game, had a few half-chances then obviously penalties is penalties. We went through our process. The boys did everything they could, it just wasn't our night. We should be extremely proud as a group of what we've achieved.
'We're all winners and we want to win so it's going to hurt for a while and it'll probably hurt for the rest of our careers but that's football.
'We progressed well from Russia and now it's about continuing that. We've got a great squad with loads of young players hungry for more football like this so that's all we can do.
'Build and learn and hopefully go into next year in a better way.
Football on Off The Ball, with Paddy Power’s SaveOurGame, Donating 10k to Irish football for every goal England score at the Euros.
Download the brand new OTB Sports App in the Play Store & App Store right now! We've got you covered!
Subscribe to Off The Ball's YouTube channel for more videos, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for the latest sporting news and content.
