Romania draw with Italy 2-2 (1-0 at halftime) on Tuesday night in Bologna. The goals were scored by Marchisio 55th minute (penalty kick) and Gabbiadini 66th minute for the hosts, and by Stancu 8th minute and Andone 88th minute for the guests.
Manolo Gabbiadini looked to have handed Italy a morale-boosting win before fellow substitute Florin Andone took advantage of a mistake from Italy replacement goalkeeper Salvatore Sirigu to equalize two minutes from time. It was Gabbiadini’s and Andone’s first goal for their respective teams, idahostatesman.com reports.
A Claudio Marchisio penalty cancelled out Bogdan Stancu’s early opener for Romania.
The teams walked out to the French national anthem, with two Italy players carrying a French flag, as a tribute to the 129 people killed and 350 wounded in Friday’s attacks in Paris.
There was also an impeccably observed minute of silence before the match in honor of the victims.
Security threats forced the cancellation of two other friendlies scheduled on Tuesday, Belgium-Spain, and Germany-Netherlands.
Italy was looking to bounce back from a 3-1 loss to Belgium on Friday.
However, it was Romania which started the brighter and almost took the lead in the fifth minute with a long-range strike from Gabriel Torje, to which Italy goalie Gianluigi Buffon flew to parry.
Italy failed to heed that early warning and the visitors went in front four minutes later as the Azzurri defence failed to deal with a through ball, and Stancu pounced to fire past Buffon into the bottom right corner.
Italy pressed for the equalizer but couldn’t create clearcut chances in a disappointing first half.
Eder received a penalty nine minutes after the interval when he was tripped by Dragos Grigore and Marchisio converted under the bar.
Conte made a triple substitution on the hour, and that had an immediate effect as one of those introduced gave Italy the lead just six minutes later, with Gabbiadini beating the offside trap to head in from close range after Marchisio hooked the ball back toward the six-yard box.
Conte made a further three substitutions, including replacing captain and goalkeeper Buffon with Sirigu.
Italy had to play the final five minutes with 10 men as it used up all of its substitutions when Gabbiadini went off with an ankle injury.
Romania took advantage moments later when Sirigu couldn’t hold onto Vlad Chiriches’ header from a free kick, and Andone bundled in from close range.