Italy are struggling to qualify automatically for next year's World Cup finals and the pressure on the team is exacerbated by the tension surrounding next Tuesday's qualifier with Israel in Udine.

During Friday’s massive strike action in support of the Palestinians, demonstrators went to the Italian national team’s training centre in Florence to demand the match against Israel be called off.

As of Tuesday only around 4,000 tickets had been sold for the game in Udine, a small city in Italy’s far north-east, which was picked specifically to help limit the potential for disorder.