Italy captain Fabio Cannavaro denied his side were suffering from a World Cup hangover after they opened their qualifying campaign for Euro 2008 with a 1-1 draw against Lithuania in Group B last night.

The world champions appeared to have taken control of the game at the San Paolo stadium in Naples when Filippo Inzaghi cancelled out Tomas Danilevicius's early strike.

But they had to settle for a draw after wasting a series of second-half chances in their first competitive outing since winning the World Cup in July.

"We weren't brilliant but I thought we played a good match considering many of our players have been playing only friendlies," Cannavaro said. "We knew it would be a difficult match. They were better than us for the first 10 minutes then I think we played with great determination and created 15 good chances. We were unlucky not to win."

And the absence of four first-choice starters almost proved disastrous when Holland failed to brush aside Luxembourg and had to make do with a 1-0 win in Group G.

Coach Marco van Basten missed Rafael van der Vaart and Arjen Robben through injury while defenders Khalid Boulahrouz and Giovanni van Bronckhorst were suspended.

"It was too poor to talk about details, really nothing worked out," said an angry Van Basten. "These players all proved in the recent past that they can play football but didn't show that tonight.

"It is disturbing to see our performance without the injured and suspended players. That is something we have to think about."