Soccer/Italy - 2 Bulgaria - 1: In the end, and in this case we do mean the very end, Italy's worst nightmare was realised. With both games in injury-time, not only did Sweden equalise - thus producing the dreaded 2-2 result in Porto - but here in Guimaraes Italy finally put themselves in front for a perfectly useless 2-1 win.

Before Italian pundits and half the Italian nation start crying "foul", however, let it be said that on the balance of their three first-round games, Italy did not deserve to go through to the quarter-finals.

One hour of splendid football against Sweden is a rather meagre return from four-and-a-half hours of soccer.

Worse still, Italy gave a horrifically inept performance against Bulgaria last night. It had always been possible that the obsessive Italian concern about the nuances of a 2-2 draw between Denmark and Sweden might distract them from playing well against Bulgaria last night, and so it proved.

Speaking after the match, coach Giovanni Trapattoni said that Italy goes out of the tournament with its "head held high", adding that he had no reason to suspect the 2-2 result in Porto. Furthermore, he said, it was absolutely out of the question that the Italian Federation would lodge any form of complaint.

In truth, though, Italy did not go out with its head held high, while any suspicions about Denmark and Sweden ignore the simple fact that Italy was not good enough to beat either of those teams in their direct clashes. Regardless of last night's combination of results and regardless of the three-match suspension handed out to Francesco Totti, Italy failed for the classic Italian fault of an over-cautious, percentage game attitude against both Denmark and Sweden.

In the end, the only bright note in the Italian performance last night came from AS Roma striker Antonio Cassano, who gave Italy the momentary illusion of being in the quarter-finals when he scored a brilliant, but barely deserved 94th-minute winner when he knocked home a cross from right back Massimo Oddo.

That goal completed a laborious Italian fightback following a first half which had ended with the Bulgarians 1-0 in front.

Cassano had prompted the second-half revival, too, when he hit a Gianluca Zambrotta cross on to the bar and thus set up the 48th-minute equaliser from midfielder Simone Perrotta.

It had been such an inept Italian first-half performance that when defender Christian Panucci hit the bar when trying to kick an unwanted second ball off the pitch, the Bulgarian fans jeered with delight. Frankly, the men from the "most beautiful league in the world" had looked so alarmingly short of ideas, urgency and initiative that one could easily have formed the impression that it was Italy, not Bulgaria, who started the match already eliminated from the tournament.

When you are not playing particularly well, it becomes all the more important to take whatever chances Dame Fortune kindly throws your way. Despite their miserable start, however, the Italians still might have put themselves in front in the 14th minute when Del Piero failed to make the most of snap-shot rebound, after Cassano had found Fiore with a good cross from which the Lazio midfielder forced a good parried save by Bulgarian goalkeeper Zdravkov.

As the first half progressed, though, the Bulgarians came more and more into the match, not so much thanks to their own footballing talents but more by default on the part of the strangely underwhelming Italians.

The best move in a very poor first 45 minutes was a Bulgarian counter-attack involving Petrov, Hristov, Berbatov and Petrov again with a shot which Buffon did well to parry for a corner.

That the Bulgarians then went ahead thanks to a 45th-minute penalty converted by Petrov was entirely within the logic of a poor match. Again it was Petrov, the best player in the first half, who set the action rolling with a telling run down the left and an even better through pass to Berbatov who was clumsily upended by Materazzi.

Referee Ivanov did not hesitate before pointing to the spot for a penalty that was knocked away with total ease by Petrov.

Even then, regardless of what was going on up the road in Porto, one feared the worst for Italy. Such an Italian side frankly did not deserve to be going anywhere other than home.