VIENNA, June 21: Italy go into Sunday’s Euro 2008 quarter-final against Spain knowing that their group stage form has made the world champions look like underdogs.

Spain go into the Vienna match on a roll, looking to extend their unbeaten run to 20 games after winning all three group matches — albeit with decreasing authority — and with their first team raring to go after a week’s rest.

In contrast, 2006 World Cup winners Italy limped over the line having been on the brink of an early exit against Romania after their introductory 3-0 thrashing by the Netherlands.

But that all counts for nothing now as, apart from a couple of Italy suspensions, the teams start again with a clean slate.

Spain certainly will not be making any assumptions after so often looking the business in the group stage only to quickly fall away in the knockout rounds.

“This team have learned a lot since the World Cup,” said midfielder Xabi Alonso in reference to their charge through the early stages in 2006 that ended abruptly with defeat by France.

“We were a young side then and now we know what these competitions are like.”

A team tagged as “perennial under-achievers” have looked good so far. Their neat-passing midfielders have created chance after chance for strikers David Villa and Fernando Torres, who took plenty of them in a 4-1 win over Russia and a last-gasp 2-1 success against Sweden.

The reserves then stepped in to beat Greece 2-1 in their final game.

Italy, who rounded off the group stage with a 2-0 win over France, make something of a habit of starting slowly but coming to the boil when it really matters.

Like Germany, who shrugged off a group stage defeat by Croatia to beat Group ‘A’ winners Portugal on Thursday, Italy will wipe from their minds that Dutch drubbing and the Romania draw, when only Gianluigi Buffon’s late penalty save kept them in the tournament.—Reuters