The final match of another busy day at Euro 2024 is one of the marquee fixtures of the group stage as Italy continue the defence of their title when they go up against Spain in a huge clash in Group B in Gelsenkirchen.
Both teams won their opening fixture in this group so they will head into this second one knowing that a win sends them straight into the knockout stage but both are likely to progress with a draw and would have another game to make sure.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the ITV1 channel in the UK with the build-up to this huge clash beginning at 7.15pm ahead of the 8pm kick off.
Spain
Going into the tournament nobody was really talking about Spain as the potential champions, which when you consider they currently hold the other competitive European trophy in terms of the UEFA Nations League was quite a weird thing. It didn’t take long for them to be propelled into the thinking of possible winners though as they cruised past a poor Croatia side in their opening game. The bonus to that win was they had the match won by half time and were able to cruise through the second half.
If you wanted to be critical of that win then it would come in the form of the amount of chances that they gave up to Croatia but we should acknowledge that the game situation played a large part in that. They will want to have more control of the ball than they did in that opening game but this is a Spain side with a direct threat from wide areas and you sense the longer they go in this competition and face jaded players the bigger the potency from that area will be.
Italy
There were certainly a lot of doubters regarding Italy going into the tournament, largely because their squad looked nothing like as strong as the one which won this competition three years ago, but they were able to silence some of those who were against them by winning that first game against Albania, and winning from behind too which shows that they have a bit of character about them, not least when you consider how early they fell behind in the match.
I didn’t think Italy were fantastic in that first game but having watched them in qualifying they were certainly better than they showed there. You would imagine there is more to come from them, as there would be from most of the teams in the tournament given the shorter preparation time ahead of this event, and if they can find a ruthless edge in attack then they might outperform the expectations of those who doubted them heading into the competition.
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Team News
Spain were without former Manchester City defender Aymeric Laporte for their opening game but he is expected to be back in the squad for this one although he might need to make do with a place on the bench.
There has been no indication that Luciano Spalletti is about to make changes to his Italian side after the opening win against Albania but Gianluca Scamacca was on the fringes of the play so Genoa forward Mateo Retegui could replace him.
Betting
This one feels like a trappy game to me because a draw really doesn’t do either any harm. It is also a trappy game because we need to know that Spain are as good as they showed in attack against Croatia but better at the back and we might get the answers here. Italy themselves still have one or two questions to answer although I thought they showed more of what we would have expected from them than we actually got against Albania.
Rather than second guess how this one plays out I’m going to attack a favourable matchup which comes down the Spanish right or Italian left and take Lamine Yamal to have a shot on target. Albania got in down the Italian right a few times in the first game with their goal coming from that side and a couple of other shots. Federico Dimarco looks like the weak link in the Italian defence with his attacking play much stronger than the defensive stuff. Yamal was up against a much better defender in Josko Gvardiol against Croatia in his opener but still had three goals and hit the target with one of them. The 10/11 on the Barcelona star to have a shot on target here looks too big given his favourable opponent.
Tips
Back L.Yamal – Over 0.5 shots on target for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Bet365
