Gennaro Gattuso slammed the criticism his Italy side received from their travelling fans during their 2-0 win against Moldova.

Gianluca Mancini and Francesco Pio Esposito scored in the latter stages of the match to secure victory in their penultimate World Cup qualifying match.

Italy are currently second in Group I and face leaders Norway in their final match on Sunday, but the Azzurri will need to win by a nine-goal margin to achieve automatic qualification for the 2026 World Cup.

Gattuso became only the third coach in Italian history to win each of the first five matches as Azzurri boss, following Edmondo Fabbri between 1962 and 1963 and Azeglio Vicini between 1986 and 1987.

Despite his achievement, Gattuso was disappointed by the negative chants that were audible from the away end when the game was still goalless.

“What do you mean this wasn’t the best Italy performance? I saw the lads dominating the match, Moldova never had a shot on target,” Gattuso told RAI Sport.

“If you were expecting an 11-1 like Moldova had against Norway, then that is not my problem. There are no easy matches.

“I feel bad about what I heard from the crowd today, chants telling us to get to work. This is when we must remain united, the team is doing what they need to do.

“Coming away from home and hearing 500-odd fans insulting the players, I do not accept that.”

Sandro Tonali added on Sky Sports Italia: “It wasn’t easy, but this is modern football. We also knew that Norway had won, so it was a bit of a strange atmosphere.

“There were a lot of changes too and that made it rather difficult to concentrate fully, but we got the three points and that’s what we needed right now, to keep winning.

“We played a little less well than before, but we have to look at the big picture and the overall progress.

“It’s easy to judge from the outside, but you have to experience it and know that at the end of the day the result counted for us more than for World Cup qualification.”

If Italy do not achieve a staggering nine-goal win over Norway on Sunday, they will enter the UEFA play-offs in March.

Sixteen teams will participate, being split into four separate paths, each of which will produce one qualifier.