The Monday action at Euro 2020 kicks off in Copenhagen when a pair of runners up from the group stage battle it out for a place in the quarter finals when Croatia go up against the former champions Spain in a tasty looking clash.
Croatia finished runners up to England in the first stage of the competition whereas Spain overcame a sloppy start to the tournament to come through Group E in behind Sweden. Both sides will be eyeing up another last eight clash where the world champions France could be their opponents.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the ITV1 channel with the programme beginning at 4.15pm UK time and the match kicking off 45 minutes later.
Croatia
It was a very slow start to the tournament for Croatia with an opening match against England in which they offered little to nothing throughout the contest, before not delivering much more in the first half of their next game against Czech Republic. They woke up after half time in that contest though, coming away with a draw before delivering their best display so far against Scotland to make it through to this stage.
That Scotland game was a knockout match in all but name so the fact they have already come through one of those will give them a lot of confidence for this one. You could make the argument that getting better with each match and qualifying is the way to do it in the group stage so Croatia could be dangerous here, as long as they stay tight defensively. They are not blessed with attacking mite but there is enough there to cause Spain problems.
Spain
It was really hard to know what to make of Spain throughout the group stage really. They had all the ball in their opening two matches but could only find the net once and couldn’t win either of them. That left them in a match they couldn’t afford to lose against Slovakia in their final group game and in truth the occasion was too much for their opponents who caved in quite tamely. A 5-0 win will have done Spanish confidence no harm but there is a chance that all it did was paper over some pretty large cracks.
At some stage in this tournament you sense the lack of an out and out goalscorer is going to catch up with Spain to catastrophic effect. The other concern is that for all the ball they had in that opening match, Sweden missed a golden chance and Poland scored and hit the post against them. That suggests they are not up to speed or good enough defensively and in this half of the draw, if that is the case they will certainly get found out.
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Team News
Croatia were dealt a blow in the lead up to the contest with their leading scorer in the tournament Ivan Perisic ruled out of the match after he tested positive for Covid-19. Fortunately for them, it appears he is the only one who has to isolate.
Luis Enrique made a number of changes for the win over Slovakia and it will be interesting to see if he sticks with the same starting XI or brings back the likes of Ferran Torres and Rodri. Pablo Sarabia has impressed and should keep his place.
Betting
I was in two minds about this match before the news about the Ivan Perisic positive Covid test and I think that plays into the hands of Spain a lot more. I do not feel great about this Spanish defence but Perisic is a huge part of their attacking play and if Croatia don’t have much of the ball they are going to need to make the most of every opportunity they get. The other issue I have is this Croatia defence don’t deal in clean sheets.
Spain struggled in the opening two matches in this tournament but they never struggled in creating chances, they just couldn’t convert many of them but the combinations looked a lot more fluent against Slovakia and I suspect the do or die nature of this one will focus their minds and make sure they are more clinical. We also shouldn’t forget the Slovakia game was the only one they had their captain Sergei Busquets for. I think the balance has tipped much more in the favour of Spain since the early group stages and I’ll back them on the Asian lines.
Tips
Back Spain (-1AH) to beat Croatia for a 3/10 stake at 2.04 with BetVictor
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