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Del Piero stars in FIFA Legends match

Italy's Alessandro del Piero and Portugal's Nuno Gomes scored in the Legends exhibition match played during the rest day of the FIFA World Cup.

Del Piero stars in FIFA Legends match
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Cafu, FIFA President Gianni Infantino and Alessandro del Piero

By

The Bridge Desk

Updated: 12 Dec 2022 9:41 PM GMT

Italy may not be part of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, but it was Italian Alessandro del Piero who was the star of the FIFA All-Stars match played at the Al Thumama Stadium in Doha, Qatar, on Monday.

Del Piero and Portugal's Nuno Gomes scored in a 2-0 victory for the winning team in a 60-minute showdown between two teams composed of former footballers and stadium workers - some of whom won the last edition of the Workers' Cup. Brazil's Cafu led the losing team.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino made his debut as a referee at the World Cup, even getting into a mess with Del Piero .

Alessandro Del Piero was part of the team coached by Roberto Carlos. Some of the others in the winning team were Mexico's Jorge Campos, Italy's Marco Materazzi, Spain's Michel Salgado, Nuno Gomes, Netherlands' Clarence Seedorf and several stadium workers.

Here's Del Piero skipping past John Terry:

On the other side were the Italian Christian Vieri, France's Claude Makelele, Portugal's Deco, Argentina's Javier Zanetti, England's John Terry, Australia's Tim Cahill and Cafú.

Roberto Carlos's team, playing in yellow, got into the lead in the first half itself. The blue team relied heavily on Cafu, 52, and Zanetti, 49. Cafu decided to play as a forward in the second half. While he is said to have been bad, he is only reported to have been outdone by the striker at the other end, John Terry, who decided to follow suit but was even worse.

This exhibition match, which drew a crowd of around 5000, was the precursor to the FIFA Legends Cup, an 8-team tournament set to take place on December 15-16 at the Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex. Julio Cesar, Hristo Stoichkov, Juan Pablo Angel, Geremi Njitap and and several other legends will be part of the tournament.

Roberto Carlos runs away with the winning trophy

The FIFA Legends Cup will have eight teams, with each team comprising of 12 players, eight of whom would be men, two goalkeepers, and two women. The matches would be six versus six with 18 matches in total throughout the tournament.

This tournament will lead up to the FIFA World Cup third place match will take place on December 17 at Khalifa International Stadium, followed by the much-anticipated Final on December 18 at Lusail Stadium.

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