England will attempt to reach the semi-final of a European Championship for the first time in 25 years on Saturday evening when they head to Rome to take on Ukraine in the quarter final of Euro 2020, the remainder of which will be held at Wembley Stadium.
England haven’t been flashy in this tournament but they have cruised through to the quarter final while Ukraine have ridden their luck on more than one occasion and are still here to tell the tale and looking to make further progress.
Where to watch
It is BBC1 which has the rights to this plum quarter final tie. Their build-up to the contest begins at 7pm and the match itself kicks off an hour later at 8pm.
Ukraine
When Ukraine finished their group matches it looked unlikely they would make it into the knockout stages but a very late Sweden goal later in that round secured then a place in the last 16 where Andriy Shevchenko’s men showed no gratitude to the Swedes by duly dumping them out in the final minute of extra time in what was a really physical and brutal encounter, the like of which you wonder if four days was enough time to recover from.
That is the burning question here too. There were a lot of tired and injured players in Ukrainian blue at the end of that 120 minutes so how they have recovered will be interesting to see. We’ve seen on sporadic occasions in this tournament the quality they have going forward and they will need to show a lot more of that to progress here. What they won’t want is their defence to be under siege as that looks a clear weakness of theirs.
England
There is only one team yet to concede a goal in this tournament and that is England. They will go into this quarter final confident that if that statistic remains intact at the final whistle they will have enough in the forward areas to follow up their World Cup semi-final three years ago with another last four clash on Wednesday evening. While England fans would like to see their attacking talent utilised more often, nobody can argue with their results thus far.
England might be their own biggest opponent here. I say that because the Germany occasion was so huge and the magnitude of the result so big that there will inevitably be a comedown from that, particularly with this match being played in front of a quarter of the people that one was and no England fans will be in the ground. If they can get over that mental obstacle and deliver a solid performance then the evidence so far suggests they should have far too much for Ukraine.
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Team News
Ukraine are definitely going to be without their forward Artem Besedin after he suffered a knee ligament injury in the red card incident in the last game. Andriy Yarmolenko left that game with injury but he is pushing to be fit.
Gareth Southgate has declared that Bukayo Saka has a slight knock and is unlikely to be risked here prompting talk that Jadon Sancho could start for the first time in the tournament. Mason Mount is expected to return but Jack Grealish will start on the bench once again.
Betting
There isn’t a huge amount I like in this match. I expect England to win but there is the danger of the comedown from the last game so I’m not really interested in taking them at a short price while this is just about winning so the fancy handicaps and markets aren’t really of interest either in truth. I do think England will get some joy down their left side though and I’ll take a couple of player bets that can back that up.
I expect Raheem Sterling to have a lot of joy down that left hand side for England. The Dutch feasted on that side of the pitch in the opening Ukraine match and Emil Forsberg was a constant presence on that side in the last game. Sterling can cut in or go on the outside and he is clearly in good form. The right-back for Ukraine continually gets exposed with Andriy Yarmolenko not tracking back and that is going to bring Luke Shaw into the game too. Shaw assisted the Sterling goal to open the scoring in the Germany game and I’m going to cover all bets which account for a repeat of that by taking Shaw to deliver an assist and Sterling to score first and anytime, the first of which looks a huge price at 11/2 given it has landed in all three matches England have scored in so far.
Tips
Back R.Sterling to score first for a 1/10 stake at 6.50 with William Hill
Back R.Sterling to score anytime for a 2/10 stake at 3.10 with William Hill
Back them here:
Back L.Shaw anytime assist for a 1/10 stake at 5.50 with Betfair
Back him here:
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