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Italy Shows Some Grit Just as the Results Start to Matter

LONDON — The crucial first touch for the opening goal, the one that brought everything that followed into existence, came not from one of the traditional parts of a body used to control a ball — the foot, sometimes the head, maybe the chest — but from something a little more unorthodox. Federico Chiesa had to improvise, so he used his face.

A few minutes later, Andrea Belotti created Italy’s second goal while lying on the ground facing the wrong direction, with two Austrian defenders crowding over him and desperately trying to extract the ball from underneath his body.