Kerr concerned after defeat by ‘technically superior’ visitors

Ian Parkes

With this friendly coming just three weeks ahead of a vital World Cup qualifier at home to France, the defeat and the manner of the performance was not what Kerr wanted.

Kerr chose the Italians for this match because they play a similar style of game to the French, and will have been shocked by the way his team were outplayed in the opening 30 minutes in particular.

It is the game with France on September 7 that will now dominate his thoughts as he said: "I thought we put in a decent performance in what was a tough match.

"But they are technically superior and were physically stronger than us and that is a concern.

"But it's one of the reasons why I am happy we played Italy because in general the French players are also strong.

"You can tell that by the depth of players they have to pick from and the quality and technical ability there is in the French league.

"They've also had a lot of players emerge in other leagues, although I would say there's not that much difference between us and them because we've a number of players who are well up there too.

"But overall the Italian team were much stronger than us and it took us time to deal with that."

Kerr felt the friendly workout was "as good an exercise as we could have got," and added: "I think in general the friendlies we have played there has been a good attitude from the teams.

"If you think back to those we played against Portugal, Brazil and Croatia, then those matches were up there with this one.

"Italy were maybe superior and we maybe weren't as good tonight as we were in some of those other games, but it's a fine line.

"They have generally all been one-goal games or draws, and I thought we were unlucky not to get a draw at the end of this one.

"There wasn't that much between the teams. It was a very fine line just like in our group.

"I'm disappointed we lost but it wasn't a bad team we lost to.

"It was a very good performance in a very open match with a lot of goal attempts.

"I thought we deserved something and we came very close, Clinton Morrison had a great goal disallowed and Stephen Elliott was very close.

"But there were a lot of good performances around the pitch and we will have a chance against France.

"But we will need a better, tighter performance and more discipline defensively we won't be able to give away so many chances," said the Ireland manager.