The editor of Il Giornale has slammed Italy winger Simone Pepe over complaints about their cartoonist.

Italy's first round exit from the World Cup was depicted on Il Giornale's front page in a vignette with blue coffins laid out on the pitch in a 4-3-3 formation.

"That was going too far," slammed Pepe upon his return from South Africa. "I accept criticism, but depicting us in coffins is offensive.

"Whoever drew such a thing should be an undertaker. I hope soon they get to build a coffin for him instead - not blue, but brown."

But the editor of Il Giornale also slammed Pepe's complaints about the cartoon.

"A vignette is a vignette," said Vittorio Feltri. "If Pepe knew how to read, he'd realise that the message was not the physical death of the players, but the death of our football."