An entire day seems like a blatant exaggeration, doesn't it? Better would be to say, i.e an hour or half at best. There's also the fact that you cannot control how where a person looks at. A was grabbed, but the shock made him look at directly at Madara's eyes. You could call it an acute stress reaction. A simple trick from Itachi identical to it, would grant the same result.
Sasuke didn't once activate Genjutsu in his fight with A - in fact, he rarely does that. He and Madara are also much inferior Genjutsu-users, who not only use inferior type of Genjutsu's, but also have lesser methods to trap one in Genjutsu. So I wouldn't compare them to Itachi if I were you...
