Coventry City’s players can now all enjoy a restful summer after Sweden crashed out of Euro 2000.

The Swedish side containing Magnus Hedman and Tomas Gustafsson were unable to overcome an Italian team resting many of its stars.

Needing a win to keep their quarter final hopes alive, the Swedes attacked from the off, but fell behind to a superb headed goal from Luigi Di Biagio's seven minutes before half time.

Lacking several key players, lost to the side before the tournament through injury, Sweden never got going when the crunch came, despite having one of the best qualifying records.

Their hopes of scrambling through Group B were revived by a Henrik Larsson goal on 77 minutes, but the team’s hopes were dashed 11 minutes later when Del Piero scored the Italian winner.

Sweden were left bottom of the group, and Coventry City’s only representatives at the tournament have the meagre bonus of a longer summer break before pre-season training starts.

Hedman said his country’s exit was down to the performance in all three games, and not just about losing to Italy.

He said:

"It is not only about losing to the Italians. It's how we performed in the three games as a whole and I think it was the Belgium game that did for us.

“Against Italy we played one of the best games I have been involved in - I would say we played optimally. We just couldn't score.

 "We are a lot better than we have shown with the exception of the Italy match. But the results speak for themselves and we haven't been good enough to get ourselves through.

“That is a big, big, major disappointment."