Up against it: reigning World Cup holders Italy have to beat Slovakia in final group match to progress

All over the glistening, ultra-modern Mbombela Stadium, patches of white whirled, New Zealand shirts stripped from chests and held aloft in defiance and delight. The team that came as cannon fodder had just detonated Italy’s World Cup hopes.

The reigning champions, of course, can still qualify for the last 16 with victory in their final game against Slovakia, though they are unlikely to win the group. They most likely will. But any pretence Marcello Lippi and his side had of retaining their trophy was exposed as folly by the team from the ultimate backwater, the proverbial team of part-timers and no-hopers.

But that was more than enough to hold on for a point after Shane Smeltz, once deemed not good enough by Halifax, handed Ricki Herbert’s side the lead. Only through Daniele De Rossi’s canny trickery did Italy break through the wall of white, the Roma player winning a penalty expertly converted by Juventus’s Vincenzo Iaquinta.

There was nothing lucky about this point, though, for New Zealand, standard-bearers of the smaller nations. They qualified by beating the likes of Vanuatu and American Samoa, but any doubts that they might not have deserved their place can be cast aside. They are no ingénues.

Their goal may have been fortuitous - Smeltz a yard offside as Winston Reid flicked Simon Elliott’s free kick into his path, via the tumbling Fabio Cannavaro - but the way they set about frustrating the world champions was down to a mix of astute application and sheer ability.

Led by the imperious, impervious Ryan Nelsen, Ricki Herbert’s side effortlessly, instinctively switched from 3-4-1-2 when in possession to an unmoving five-man backline when without, stifling space and reducing Italy, looking mechanical rather than menacing, to long-range efforts.

Both Gianluca Zambrotta and, more threateningly, Riccardo Montolivo went close, the latter producing a viciously whipping daisy-cutter which caught the inside of Robert Paston’s right-hand post, but it was scattergun, percentage stuff, a team of artists forced to rely on the numbers game.

It had little effect. New Zealand held firm, undone only by their opponents’ mastery of the game’s darker arts.

Tommy Smith, of Ipswich Town, took on the role of mark, Daniele De Rossi the common purpose crook who had spotted his victim. The Roma midfielder was already in mid-leap when Smith fingered his shirt. It was a penalty, certainly, but perhaps only by the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of it. Vincenzo Iaquinta, coolly, calmly, converted.

Humiliation averted? Not a bit of it. New Zealand refused to buckle, to wilt to received wisdom. Paston denied De Rossi before the break, and substitute Antonio Di Natale and Montolivo, sprawling low to his right, after it.

Marcello Lippi threw on striker after striker, abandoning all pretence at system or tactical subtlety. Cannavaro and Giorgio Chiellini stationed themselves midway into the All Whites’ half, constantly loading the ball back to their attackers, chiding and chastising as each passage of play came to nothing.

Nelsen denied Di Natale just yards from his goal-line. Smith stretched out a leg to tip the ball from Iaquinta’s toe, Smeltz deflected the striker’s header wide from the resultant corner. Nelsen, doubled over with cramp one moment, threw his body in the way of a Zambrotta shot the next.

New Zealand, dripping with defiance, would not be broken. The white shirts began to whirl. It is a gesture with a different meaning in other parts of Europe, of course, the wall of white a sign of displeasure. The irony will not be lost on Lippi and his team.