Italy trailed by two goals before a hat-trick from Alberto Gilardino earned them a last-gasp win.

But Lippi could draw no pleasure from the result after witnessing the crowd's reaction to their performance.

"I am furious like a beast," he said. "If anybody has forgotten this, on the field out there were the world champions.

"That means that we have won a tournament against all of the top nations in the world.

"These lads are the world champions, they have just qualified to try and become world champions again, but do you think it is right to hear fans telling us to get to work at the first sign of difficulty?

"It's easy in the end for them to all cheer, though. I think it is shameful.

"The problem is a lack of respect towards these extraordinary players who were in trouble, but reacted and then even won the game."

Lippi changed his entire team after Saturday's 2-2 draw in the Republic of Ireland which clinched Italy's place at next summer's World Cup.

But that did not give the fans the right to criticise, according to Lippi.

"Saturday was a great result to get to another World Cup and defend this title and evidently qualifying in advance of this game made us happy and we celebrated it," he explained.

"I promised that I would make changes and I changed all 11 players. Whenever does a coach change 11 players?

"Of course it was not going to be easy for these 11 players, also because they (Cyprus) put four past Bulgaria at the weekend, but the result was not important to me.

"If I had been interested in the result, I would not have changed all 11 players.

"But those people, who were obviously a minority, start shouting for us to get to work should probably go start working themselves."

Lippi was joined in his rage by Cyprus coach Angelos Anastasiadis, albeit for different reasons.

Although the Cypriots were only playing for pride, this defeat still hurt as much as if qualification for South Africa had depended on it.

"I am very unhappy today," said Anastasiadis. "We started and we ended our qualifying campaign like this and I and my team are really sad.

"We lost this ourselves. We could easily have won this game, but maybe we just lacked the experience to get a great victory.

"My players need to understand that they were up against the world champions, not just any team, and we could have won easily.

"To lead 2-0 against the world champions and lose 3-2 is a bitter defeat."

If it came as any consolation to Anastadiadis, Lippi did at least admit that fortune had played a major part in his side's two victories over Cyprus in the qualifying campaign.

"They threatened us, but they lost," he said. "They did not deserve to lose neither here nor over there."