IT took this game at Newcastle last night only fourteen minutes to erupt into something that threatened to be another Milan riot. Young Italy were leading 1-0—centre forward Bruno Nicole had scored in the sixth minute—when the storm broke.
Joe Baker, the Hibs centre-forward being watched by several English League clubs, dashed through to shoulder-charge goalkeeper Roberto Ansolin as he gathered the ball.
Goalkeeper and ball crashed back into the net, and as the English-speaking Belgian referee, Van Nussel, immediately signalled a goal, the whole Italian team rushed back to protest.
Photographers came on to the pitch but the referee was adamant. It was a goal. And it looked like sparking off the same angry scenes that had wrecked the Football League's game against the Italian League on Tuesday. But the Italian team's manager, in dark blue trilby and mackintosh, rushed on to the pitch to tell his team to get on with the game. Two minutes later the game got under way again after the Italian trainer had attended the fallen goalkeeper. As he ran off he kissed his fingers in disgust at the lineman and referee. England nearly went ahead when inside right Peter Dobing hit the post after a left wing move. And left winger Bobby Charlton did the same nine minutes later.  Right on the thirty-minute mark, Italian inside left Giacono Bulgarelli trotted off and was replaced by reserve Giorgio Ferinni. Seven minutes later their left winger, Giuseppe Rossano, fell writhing as if in agony, after a tackle. The crowd whistled and jeered as the trainer ran across the pitch to give him treatment.
   He was carried off, but the Italians, instead of bringing on another substitute, remained a ten-man team until the interval.
Rossano resumed at outside left for the second half, but goalkeeper Ansolin was replaced by Enrico Albertosi. Neither side had a "general" to master-mind a concerted attack and both relied on individual breakaways to snatch a game-clinching goal. Outside right Bruno Mora came closest for Italy. And Charlton, England's star in the successes against Spain, Luxembourg and Ireland, went near for his side. But the game which had threatened firworks so often in the first half simply fizzled out. Charlton still tried desperately to get the English attack moving without any success.
   

Italy scored in the sixth minute of this floodlit match at Newcastle when Macedo, playing in goal for England, was impeded by McNeil, and allowed Niole's header to slip and roll over the line. At this stage the Italians were unlucky not to have gone further ahead, but in the fourteenth minute England equalised when Baker put Anzolin and the ball over the goal-line and in the net with a perfect shoulder-charge. Despite appeals by the Italian players, the referee ruled that the goal was perfectly fair. The England forward-line showed enterprise and matched the ball skill of their opponents. The defense, however, was uncertain under pressure and play deteriorated after halftime.