Football’s great countries meet again in the semifinals of the Nations League.
PDO
The most interesting game of the day
The final games of the Nations League offer Spain and Italy, who have not done well recently, a good opportunity to wash their faces. Spain performed exceptionally poorly in December’s World Cup tournament. The team barely made it through the initial group to the next round, only to fall immediately in the quarterfinals to Morocco on penalty kicks.
For Italy, the previous World Cups were even more disappointing than for Spain, as the country did not even make it to the final tournament. The ongoing European Championship qualifiers of both countries have also started with a bang, to say the least. In their previous match against Scotland, Spain was completely unarmed and lost away 0–2. In the opening round of the qualifiers, Italy, on the other hand, had to admit that England was clearly better both in terms of play and results (1–2 home defeat).
In the Nations League, history repeats itself for Spain and Italy, as the same countries met in the semifinals in the previous tournament as well.
A couple of years ago, Spain beat Italy 2–1 and advanced to the final, where France was ultimately stronger with 2–1. Both teams advanced to the semi-finals of this season after tight situations. Spain was one point ahead of Portugal in its first group after winning the final match of the first series between the teams 1–0 Alvaro Morata with a goal in the 88th minute.
Italy, on the other hand, passed Hungary by a point after winning the final round match between them 2–0.
In 2021, the countries also have experience of mutual big matches in the European Championship final tournament, when Italy beat Spain in the semifinals after penalty kicks 2–1 and advanced to the final against England.
England also fell in the final at that time with penalty kicks 2–1. After those European Championships, success has eluded the Azzurri.
Spain is currently strongly in the grip of change.
The coaching responsibility was transferred after the failure of the World Cup From Luis Enrique For a long-time pilot of the Spanish junior national teams To Luis de la Fuente, and there is a clear generational change on the assembly side as well. For example, from the 2021 Nations League final team, the current group only includes six of the same players.
In Italy, patience with the head coach has endured the recent failures better, and Roberto Mancini continues to lead the team for the sixth year already. Continuity should count as an advantage in this case.
The most interesting player in the team is the originally Argentinian striker Mateo Retegui, who chose Italy as his team at the national team level. The 24-year-old Retegui has played two matches in the Italian shirt so far (both spring European Championship qualifiers) and scored a goal in both. For Italy, who have suffered from the difficulty of scoring for a long time, the bulky, but still really skilled Retegui may be the missing piece in terms of future success.
Even though the match is played a bit in the off-season, it is likely that the game is marked on the importance list of both Spain and Italy in a pretty thick color. In terms of gameplay, I expect the Spain – Italy match to be more accurate and fewer goals than yesterday’s Holland – Croatia. The match starts at 21:45.
The best betting tip of the day
In terms of betting, Spain – Italy is a surprisingly difficult case to evaluate. Recently, strange countries have not excelled either in terms of games or results. In their previous match in the EC qualifiers (0-2 loss) against Scotland, Spain was downright bad, but in that match the composition of the team was also weaker than expected for this game.
Even though Italy’s European Championship qualifying opener against England (deserved 1-2 home loss) was not convincing, I personally do not think Spain is as clear a favorite here (odds scale 2.20/3.15/3.25) as Veikkaus does. In my opinion, the best game choice is the Italy of the Asian handicaps
+0.25 with a coefficient of 1.84. After this tip, I myself will go on vacation and take care of the cleaning as usual Pete Käenmäki. For my part, have a nice summer to the readers.
Games of the day:-
Total balance of the day’s games for the year: 66/116/97%
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