What a potential cracker we have here, two of the giants of European football coming head-to-head this early in the competition.
We thought Spain were impressive against Croatia, very impressive, and isn’t it scary that they had a 16-year-old in Lamine Yamal who had the confidence of someone who has been playing international football for twenty years!
You could say he is a star in the making but it could be argued that he is a star already.
Italy came back from a shock early goal in their match against Albania, but as usual with Italy, they did ‘just enough’ to ensure that they started the tournament with a victory.
After watching these first two games, we are of the opinion that there is much more to come from these two teams.
Odds and Predictions
We think this will be a tight match and it looks like the bookies agree, with Spain the favourites at odds of 2.15, Italy at 3.6 and the draw priced at 3.25.
We’ve been thinking about this one since the final whistle in Spain’s game against Croatia and whilst Spain were on fire in that game, we think that Italy will be more of a challenge, especially when it comes to scoring goals.
With that in mind, we are going for the following tips: the draw at 3.25 and, to be more precise, the 1 – 1 draw with odds of 6.5.
The last one of our predictions is based on a player who impressed us greatly on Saturday, Spain’s Alvaro Morata, so we have decided to back him on the ‘to score at any time’ market at odds of 3.0.
Comparison and Statistics from Past Meetings between the Teams
Spain and Italy have played each other H2H a total of 40 times, so there is an awful lot of football history between them.
Their encounters span various major tournaments, including the FIFA World Cup, UEFA European Championship, and UEFA Nations League, as well as friendly matches.
Spain has won 13 of these matches, Italy has won 12, and 15 matches have ended in a draw.
| Past Meetings | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Jun 2023 | spain | 2-1 | italy | UEFA Nations League |
| 06 Oct 2021 | italy | 1-2 | spain | UEFA Nations League |
| 06 Jun 2021 | spain | 1-1 | italy | Semi-Final UEFA Euro 2020 |
| 02 Sep 2017 | spain | 3-0 | italy | FIFA World Cup Qualifier |
| 06 Oct 2016 | italy | 0-3 | spain | FIFA World Cup Qualifier |
Expected Line Ups
As is always the case when writing these expected line-ups a few days before the event, anything can happen in terms of injuries and changes of tactics, but both of these line-ups look exciting, don’t you agree?
We thought Dani Carvajal was magnificent for Spain in their victory against Croatia, as were all of the back line, very confident against an attacking Croatian forward line, especially in the second half.
Spain (4-3-3): Unai Simón; Dani Carvajal, Aymeric Laporte, Robin Le Normand, Alejandro Grimaldo; Rodri, Pedri, Mikel Merino; Dani Olmo, Álvaro Morata, Nico Williams.
We were impressed with Nicolò Barella and his goal against Albania.
Italy (3-4-2-1): Gianluigi Donnarumma; Giovanni Di Lorenzo, Alessandro Buongiorno, Alessandro Bastoni; Andrea Cambiaso, Jorginho, Nicolò Barella, Federico Dimarco; Davide Frattesi, Federico Chiesa; Gianluca Scamacca.
How Far Will These Teams Progress in the Tournament?
How this match plays out will give us a far better indication of how far these teams will progress in the tournament.
The Italy v Croatia match on the 24th will be interesting, but at this point in time, we fully expect both of these teams to qualify from Group B. To be honest, we also expect both teams to reach the Quarter-final of the competition and probably progress from there.
